No Cure  Treat With A Bullet
by Tebbers
Summary: Sequel to Feathers. Prototype and Left 4 Dead crossover. Time marches on when death doesn't stay, and the possibilities are endless, and change with every choice. With a guide to what choices must be made, Altaïr follows the path, still asking why.
1. Chapter 1

a/n Wow, okay, so this is a random side note that grew out of control. Originally brought on by a few side mentions of infection in AI. (Side mentions. Right. Mercer has one line. ONE LINE! And that made this story.) For those of you finding this joy of crossover, it's more Assassin's Creed heavy than Prototype as far as face time goes. So heads up. Then again, there's a healthy dose of Left 4 Dead, but it's all infected instead of survivors, which is why this isn't in with the L4D crossovers anymore. Anyway, yeh..

Altaïr is Ubisoft's. Mercer is Activision/Radical's, though he's not here yet. The hunters, and other infected and their viral attitudes are Valve's. Aisling is mine.

If you weren't curious about how Aisling managed to surround herself with arguably reasonable hunters while still getting herself infected.. Stuff it. The story sounded like fun for me. (Really it nagged brain until I wrote it.) (Why do I seem to have no love for smokers, spitters or boomers? Poor mooks don't even get face time in here.) So this is what happens if you don't die. Time keeps going. It's really left field for an Assassin's Creed fanfic.. crossover with Left 4 Dead and Prototype. Then again, anything crossing those stories would be a little left field.

Further, if you haven't read Feathers, a lot of this may not make sense.

Chapter 1

"Do you think they'll do any good?" Altaïr asked her while poking at a roast simmering on the stove. It still needed more time. "They're pretty easy to deal with." He was referring to the lingering infected people not yet cleared out. Some acted like shambling zombies until they got a good look at you. Then they sprinted with speeds to put Olympic runners to shame, and made an honest effort to pummel you to death. None had laid a hand on him yet, even with his wading around at ground zero and in New Orleans, but that seemed to be because they were a little gooey. He didn't know what the infection did to them or their bones, but they cut a whole lot easier when infected than healthy people should. His stomach turned at the memory. In all the years of the centuries of his life, he'd never been disgusted by the act of killing anything until the past few weeks in recent dealings with this strange Green Flu.

"Only because it's you." She grumbled, remembering her own encounter. A whole trainload of bloody, battered people. She hadn't seen it coming, which was more than a little surprising. She knew there were infected in town, but she didn't realize that she'd encounter them so quickly. All she'd had at hand was her hidden blade, and it was hardly useful against that group. Sure it deflected blows, but those people didn't have any sense of self-preservation, and more than a few of them had bashed one another trying to hit her. She'd only barely gotten herself pulled free of the crowd before one screamed a spine-splintering scream. She just caught a glimpse of what had made the unearthly noise. A man. Infected, and sporting a dark colored and bloody hoodie over what were once light pants. The articles of clothing were taped down to his arms and legs, as odd as that seemed, and the hood was pulled low enough that she wondered how he could see. She remembered this. This was a rarer type of infection he had. Other survivors called them hunters, because that's what they did. Hunted you like oversized growling cats. He'd pounced her from the top of the train, covering a good six meters in the interim. She was impressed by the move, and had put a blade up between them and almost managed to dance out of the way, but he had kicked into the hoard and changed trajectory, missing the blade and catching her in the crook of one elbow, swinging her around and using the momentum to slam her into the ground. Her head hit the concrete, and she saw her vision splinter with her skull. Her vision cleared as it descended on her. She brought her arms up to defend herself, feeling the blade sink into flesh as the creature laid open her shoulder and part of her chest with one swipe. It had some serious claws to do that, and some strength behind it. She knew the gouges would probably be sporting some nice bruises if she made it out of this, but this infected zombie wouldn't be making it out unscathed either. Her blade had caught it in the upper arm. It didn't seem to notice, and she kept swinging, putting quite a few perforations in its torso while it continued to tear out chunks of her flesh and she swore a couple ribs too. Its ferocity seemed to ebb at the same time, perhaps from blood loss, because she was sufficiently soaked for it to not all be her own. Its body finally slumped forward, sinking down on the hidden blade. She waited for the horde to attack, but nothing came, and after a moment, the hunter moved. She braced herself for another flurry of attacks, but instead, the body fell aside, and Altaïr was staring down at her.

She shook her head, clearing the memory. Altaïr had just shanked her for the condition she was in. It would've taken weeks to heal from it properly, and her strange regeneration with the stipulation of 'but only from death' was a much faster method of healing wounds. She'd snapped back awake in this barricaded apartment that she'd sent a few of their assassins to before the infection descended. There was no sign of them now, and she'd not given an order to move. "How many do you need?" He asked, cutting into her less than savory memory.

Looking up from the linoleum of the apartment's kitchen floor, she shrugged. "As many as you can catch."

"What are you going to do with them?" He plunked the lid back onto the pot, brushed his hands off on his pants and adjusted the knit hat she'd rummaged up for him to ward off the unusual cold of an early fall morning.

She pushed herself up to sit on top of the kitchen table, blowing at the steam wafting from her tea before breaking into a cough and spitting a few feathers to her left. "Well, if you can not kill them, I'll see about either fixing them or getting some sense in them."

"How do you propose to do that?" He moved around the counter to lean against the end of it.

"Bringing in one of the sciencey boys to see what he can do with them. It's just a pathogen anyway. Right? It should have a cure." She gave him a hopeful half smile.

He shuddered. "Haven't they gassed most of the concentrations of these things?" She had something planned, he knew that, and didn't seem very forthcoming with information, which usually meant he was going to get screwed in the end. Still, being expendable had long since become normal, and long before he was accustomed to that role, he decided that an inability to stay dead was a boon, even if she'd gifted him with it for the sole purpose of sending him on suicide missions. On more than one occasion, he'd startled her by actually returning in one piece from some psychotic kamikaze mission. That one instance in the revolution. Another time with that nuclear reactor out east. Of course, there'd been the viral outbreak in New York. He knew that one was Aisling's fault, and then she'd sent him in anyway. Then the Green Flu. That had certainly blown up in their faces in Fairfield, but then again, she'd sent him in as insurance to keep Dana alive if things got ugly. Then there was also the instance of getting that one boy in New Orleans out in one piece. He'd barely gotten back up to Colorado from that lovely adventure before she had them tromping around in Denver while the military was trying to clean up a quarantine area. Still, despite the failed attempt to save their own from an unknown virus, she found a way to turn it to an advantage. Somehow. He wasn't sure. What upper hand that would grant them, or grand weapon. Altaïr figured that a reason for this would surface eventually, and that this current mission she was hinting at seemed to be exactly that. "Fine." He sighed. "You just want the hunters? Those boomers are going to be hard to catch without popping them, and the smokers stink to high heaven."

"Nah, just the speedies." She said. "There might be a few in around here. You took out a lot of the regulars."

"Are we taking these things home?" He asked, pushing off the counter and moving toward the barred door leading out into the hallway. She nodded. "And you want them alive?"

"If you can. I bet regular sedatives should work on them."

He rolled his eyes. "Let me just go get a tranquilizer gun." He said with a grand gesture to match the measure of his sarcasm. "Because I can already assure you that whacking them in the head doesn't even slow them down."

"There's plenty at the zoo." She offered helpfully. "And I did get at least one gun for you, and a few tranquilizer rounds. They might be a little weaker by now, but they'll probably put the hunters down long enough." There'd been some measure of questioning that request when she'd told the team posted here in Denver to acquire a tranquilizer gun, but they'd likely followed orders anyway.

"Long enough?" He grunted, rummaging in the coat closet by the front door, finding said gun and ammunition among other blades and small caliber guns. He turned back to look at her. "Long enough for what? What's the plan here?"

"I'll get a truck. You get the hunters. I'll keep them sedated until we can get them home." She said, sipping tea from a mug as if this were an easy plan. "I'll empty out the garage and we can keep them down there until Mr. Science gets here to deal with them."

"Then what?" He asked, not sure if he wanted to know the ultimate goal in this disgusting body collecting adventure.

"Then we have an army!" She said, rubbing her hands together. "A screaming creepfest of an army!"

"Ugh." He grunted, found a child's shoe in the closet and threw it at her.

She barely ducked it. "You asked!" She laughed. "How long for lunch?"

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Aisling headed for the zoo, squishing over bodies as they threw themselves in front of the long, treaded truck. Lucky for her, it had been mostly the hoards of shuffling people looking as normal as they could for having torn into one another on a regular basis. She remembered the stories of some of the special infected that Altaïr had dispatched before, including the juggernauts of the infected world that he'd referred to as Tanks. She had doubts that even the truck would hold up well against them. Altaïr had disappeared after leaving the small apartment they'd locked themselves into for the better part of two days. She caught up with him at the zoo, turning into the main entry and passing by the Denver Museum on her way to the parking lot. She figured that once he'd restocked his ammunition that he would be a little more confrontational with the few infected individuals that came their way. She pulled into the parking lot. He was on the roof of the main building, and fired off a shot in her direction. She stopped the truck short as a body tumbled off the top of the cab in front of the windshield. She hopped out and moved around to the growling and slowly moving body. It looked human enough, and wore the same style of clothing as the hunter that had done her in before. Pushing her red hair out of her face, she rolled it onto its back. It was bloody, though she doubted that much of it was its blood, until she looked closer. A myriad of small slits covered the front of the jacket. She stretched out its right arm, inspecting the duct tape holding the sleeve fast against the upper arm. It also had a short tear neatly perforating the tape and cloth. Dried blood caked around it, and beneath, she could see only the faintest slash of a scar. This was the hunter that she'd encountered at the train station. Why was it still alive, and why had its wounds healed so quickly? Settling down on the pavement beside it, she pulled back the hood and tilted its head her way to get a better look at its face. Its skin was sickly gray, and it looked like it had clawed its own eyes out. There wasn't a strand of hair on its face. Not even eyebrows or eyelashes. Seemed strange, but Aisling couldn't predict the effects of the virus. Blood smeared across its lips and stained its teeth a dark red. The rest of its face looked normal enough, strong angles of what looked like north European descent. Shaking her head slightly, she tugged its arm over her shoulder and labored to her feet before dragging it to the back of the truck.

After loading the body and securing the door, she followed the trail of dead bodies and sedated hunters, stopping to collect the latter after inspecting the remains of their faces. Night wore on, and she was losing a bit of hope. There were no familiar faces in the hunters Altaïr subdued, and they already had more than two dozen. One had been a bit worrisome, though. It was still somewhat lucid when she approached. He flipped her the bird before finally succumbing to the sedatives. She looked more closely at him. Not who she was looking for, but he did have a scrap of paper in his pocket. She pulled it out. A hastily scribbled note expressing concern for children, and an address. "Well, this complicates things." Aisling sighed, and glanced up at the street sign. It was close to here. She found a tire iron in the truck, and headed that way.

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Night blended into morning, and they'd collected another dozen hunters. Altaïr seemed to have found a concentration of them, and there were five bodies in the intersection still moving and growling when she caught up. One seemed to stand out, its clothing markedly cleaner and in better repair. She approached this one first. His jacket was orange, or so it looked in the early morning light. She shifted the hood to get a better look at its face. It had done a good job mangling its face, the scars spreading a bit more around the eyes and over the nose than the others she'd seen. "Nope." She sighed. "You're pretty tall, too." She looked at the body, noting that even with its legs folded beneath it in such an awkward position, it was a pretty tall human before the infection. She wondered the extent of mutations from the virus.

"H..hello?" A tentative voice echoed out from the alley, somewhat apprehensive.

"Hey?" Aisling answered back. "You immune?"

"Hello? Yes, I am." A girl poked her head out from the ruined front door of the old retail site on one corner. She had dark hair pulled back into a tight bun, though a few stubborn wisps escaped and curled away from her head. She wore her own hoodie in a lighter shade of orange and a dark brown backpack. Seeing the scene of bodies, her eyes went wide. "OH MY GOD!" She sprinted out the door, heedless of anything else that might be out in these streets but Aisling. She dropped by the hunter in orange, looking him over before turning a hateful glare at her. "What did you do?" Something shifted in the backpack she wore, emitting low threatening growls.

"Uh.. Tranquilized him." Aisling said, holding her hands up in some defense of whatever this girl might decide to use to attack. She obviously had something up her sleeve if she were out wandering without so much as a gun in hand. "He a friend of yours? You know he's probably not like what you remember." Aisling said, her tone becoming sympathetic as she dropped her hands by her sides. If this girl had known him before he'd gotten infected, then she was in for a rude surprise when he came to. "He's.. not immune like us." She said.

"I know that!" The girl snapped, finding the tranquilizer dart embedded low on his right side and pulling it loose before throwing the scrap of metal away viciously. "He was infected when I found him! He's different. He's nice… most of the time." She added the last as an afterthought and gave him a little shake. "Wake up…." She urged him quietly.

"Uh.." Aisling stared down at this, confused. This girl had a hunter under reasonable control? How? "He's going to be out for another couple hours at least. Do you need a ride somewhere? I'm already hauling off the other hunters here."

The girl looked around at the other still grumbling hunters who were trying desperately to cling to consciousness, and failing. "What are you doing with them?" She asked before looking back down at her own hunter and slinging the backpack off her shoulders.

"Trying to find a cure." Aisling lied, standing a little taller to try to peer into the bag.

The girl paused, the bag open, and looked up at Aisling, apparently weighing some choice in her mind. Aisling didn't meet her stare, however, as a miniature copy of a hunter crawled from the bag, same clothes and everything, same agility, but it was hardly the size of an infant. It hopped lightly to the ground and proceeded to growl at her. The girl pulled her gaze away from Aisling, patting the tiny hunter on the head until it quieted, and fished out a pair of headphones from her bag. "Do whatever you need to do." She said quietly, slipping the headphones over the sleeping hunter's head. "But this one is mine."

"And the little one?" Aisling said with a little smile starting. It was actually pretty cute, but she had no doubts about what it could do.

Before she could make a joke, though, the girl snatched up the small hunter and held it close to her chest while leaning protectively over the larger one. With an absolutely animalistic baring of her teeth, she snarled. "MINE!"

Aisling held up her hands as if in surrender. "Okay. Okay. Sorry." Backing away, she inspected the other hunters. She paused at one, staring at the familiar angular face and smiling. "Ah, A-Sayr.. I finally found you. Man, it's a good thing you guys creep Altaïr out. He'd kill me if he knew.." She sighed, and started loading them up. After about twenty minutes of grunting and dragging three of the bodies, she went back for the last, and found familiar features again. "And the other too.. You boys still hunting together? Even after losing your minds.." She smiled, glad that the night wasn't completely lost. Grunting, she started dragging that body toward the truck, pausing by the girl who still sat in silent vigil. "You going to be okay?" The girl just snarled, apparently not approving of Aisling's collection of the hunters. "Fine. Fine." She said, raising her free hand again. "Safety and peace for you." She dragged the body on over and hauled it into the back of the truck before crawling up into the cargo area. Closer to the front were the bodies they'd collected earlier in the night. She added another dose of tranquilizer to the first three and hopped out the back, rolling down the door and locking it. As she was pulling herself up into the cab, she heard the girl call out.

"Hey." The girl called, finally looking up from the pavement she'd been boring holes in with her gaze. Aisling leaned around the door to look at her, indicating that she had her full attention. "Thank you." She said. "For trying to save them rather than just killing them."

"You're welcome." Aisling said awkwardly. "You know if you decide you need a cure, just let me know. I'll see what I can do."

The girl looked down at her two hunters. "Thanks." She said quietly.

Aisling hopped on inside the truck, pulling the door closed and starting up the engine before backing out of the intersection and backtracking around the girl.

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Turning the corner, the headlights flooded the street, and she saw Altaïr turn suddenly. Behind him, something else turned as well, red eyes flickering in the onslaught of light. It leapt to its feet, the form definitely feminine, thought he hands were distorted, elongated and sharp. A loud screech pierced the glass of the cab, and Aisling cringed at the sound of it. Altaïr turned to the noise, barely backpedaling away from the thin form as it took a swipe at him. It staggered forward, found its balance and took another swipe. He tried to block it with the gun, but the thin infected girl wrapped her spindly fingers around the weapon and wrenched it from his grasp. He hopped the next attack, bringing his right fist around for a solid impact on the right side of her head. She staggered from the blow and screamed at him again before rebounding quickly. The scream cut off suddenly as he stepped inside the range of the attack, and her body collided with his. Aisling caught the angle of his arm. He'd caught her with the hidden blade. Her arms went slack first, and he caught her as she stumbled back, easing her descent as her legs gave out beneath her. She reached up, wrapping her free hand around his upper arm without much strength.

Aisling let the truck choke to a stop as she jumped out of the cab and ran to catch up to the scene. "What the hell was that?"

Altaïr pried the now lifeless hand from his arm, laying it on her still oozing stomach. "I don't know. I heard her crying and came down to see if she was really infected. Then she just sat down and kept crying. Looks like you scared her when you came around the corner."

"Sorry." Aisling said. "You okay?"

"Yeah." He said, fetching the gun from where the girl had thrown it. "Getting low on darts."

"We could probably get some regular sedatives at the hospitals around here. The hunters are already out so we shouldn't need darts." She said as she turned back to the truck.

"Yeah. Could get some things for our own medical supplies too." He said, pausing long enough to close his eyes and give a brief nod to the dead girl on the ground. He still couldn't fathom what had been wrong with her or how she'd not just gone berserk like the rest of the infected. The death felt like a loss somehow. Shaking his head, he turned back to the truck.

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a/n there seems to be a distinct it/he problem with the hunters. They walk the fine line between it and he in my mind.

Also, yes, cameo by the amazing Dust-Bite from deviantart and her hunters. Wergulz, and the aptly named Mini-Hunter.

Side note for complications of the hunter with the note is a comic on my DeviantArt account. I'm DasTebbers there too, and the comic is called Anything.


	2. Chapter 2

a/n Altaïr and Lucy are Ubisoft's, even if in mention only. The hunters, and other infected mentioned are Valve's. Mercer and his viral attitude is Activision/Radical. Aisling is mine.

Again, if you haven't read Feathers, a lot of this may not make sense. Sorry.

Chapter 2

Neither had much to say in the two days it took to get back up to their small outpost well off the roads in the mountains west of Denver. They'd needed to dose up the hunters at least four more times, and their supply was still actually going strong, thanks to Altaïr's insistence that they clean out every hospital in the city of supplies. It took little time to empty two quads and three snowmobiles out of the underground garage. They took them out of the clearing and hid them beneath the trees. Most of the other tools were locked into cabinets, along with anything else not nailed down. They hoped that their experience with the infected not often actually even trying to open doors was a sign of ability. The hunters were dumped inside the garage, and the rollup door riveted closed and reinforced with three layers of wood from the outside. The other entry was simply bolted, and wired with an alarm.

She was cooking rice in the evening after they'd given them yet another dose of sedatives. She was pretty sure they were overdoing it but the hunters weren't dying, and she didn't want to have them wake up. Sleeping like that, she could more easily view them as diseased humans in dire need of help. Altaïr still kept his distance, apparently put off by their waking behaviors and unable to look past it. He was using one of the tablet computers to scan through emails. She noted that he was looking a little green, and moving a little bit slower than usual. "You okay?" She asked, already knowing the answer. Already having had this conversation in her mind two weeks earlier. Already having hauled his dead body into the basement just in time for someone to let themselves into her home in a less than subtle manner. She'd already seen this, and hadn't bothered to tell Altaïr. His catching the second plague was a monthly occurrence at least, sometimes twice a month. He never built up a resistance, the regeneration on his body restored it to the way it was when she'd cursed him with the longevity. He was more than irritated that she'd set this up at a time when he was still mending broken ribs and wounded legs, as that was the state in which he always returned to life and so was forced to take at least a week to rest and heal those wounds. She still kicked herself for the timing on that one.

He looked up at her, frowned and coughed. "Don't think so."

"Glands hurting again already?"

He nodded. "I'll be glad when this plague blows over. Probably caught it from somebody in Denver."

"Want me to get the stasis generator set up for you?" She started toward the end of the counter and had her hand on the doorknob leading into the bedroom before he could answer her.

"Nah. I'll ride it out. I want to meet this mystery science guy you're bringing in for this." He said, waving a hand at her before checking back into another email from one of their more remote assassin teams. After sending a veiled response of advice, he looked back over to her again. She had her hands on her hips and an apologetic frown on her face. He sighed. "I'm not going to make it." Her precognition had been indispensable in the past few centuries, but he still found annoyance in her constant delivery of bad news. He knew it wasn't her fault, just that she saw it beforehand. Still, he liked to at least act like he blamed her.

"No. Sorry. You're going to miss."

"Ugh." He grunted, rubbing his head. He'd only let himself last until the final phases of the plague a handful of times. It wasn't a pleasant state of being, nor was it much fun to clean up after the fact, so he made a point of killing himself well before the plague manifested any boils. "Fine. Let me go shank myself outside."

"Thanks for not bleeding on the floor." She said with a laugh.

"After how you yell about it?" He grumbled, and coughed again before standing up and moving past her into the bedroom. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it onto the bed, debating on whether or not he was going to be bleeding on these pants this time. He shook his head, opting to try to be a little more careful this time. He passed through the kitchen into the living room, mumbling about seeing her in a few days and went out the front door of the round house. More of a yurt, really, with a steeper wooden roof over heavy stone walls. It had been hand made after they'd picked the place and camped in tents for a few weeks. Now it was one of the more remote safe houses. No roads to it. No one knew the location. Hijacked satellite uplinks, and local supplies with only seldom trips down to town to get anything else.

Aisling watched him pass through, frowning at his misery. She'd lost count over how many times he'd died from the plague, and he'd never stopped giving her grief over how she never seemed to catch it. It was the same with the black plague, and the Spanish flu. She'd never suffered the ilk of those, while he'd died numerous times. All she kept was a constant, feather-producing cough, which didn't seem to be tied to any illness. They'd moved through civilization, first trying to find somewhere not affected, then isolating themselves completely from people until the illnesses blew over. He still died a few times before they were sufficiently isolated, and she'd had to go back to get some things set up and some people killed while he was still hiding from the germs. He'd been so lucky to spend quite a few years alone in the Alps, and even on the coast of Ireland. Those were definitely some of the more scenic places. She looked out the window. He was sitting in a patch of sun that had worked its way through the trees outside. Apparently he liked the scenery here. He was certainly enjoying a few minutes of taking it in. Sighing, she turned back to deal with the rice, since it was ready.

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About a half an hour later, she grabbed a tarp out of the cabinets in the front room and headed outside. His body was still in the same patch of sun, and he was laying on his back, spread out comfortably in the short grass. He'd pierced the veins in his neck with practiced accuracy, and the blood had pooled around his head, caking in the hair at the base of his neck and sticking to his shoulders. She worked the tarp around and under him before using it as a sled to drag him back around to the front. Wrapping him more fully, she hooked his arms over her shoulder and lifted him with a little more ease than her small frame would suggest. She'd had a lot of experience and exercise moving his body around. Having moved so many hunters' bodies a few days ago had weakened her muscles, though, and she was still a little sore from that, and cursed him for his weight the entire way inside and down the stairs to the basement.

Huffing and puffing, she crawled back up the steep stairs and pushed the hatch to the basement closed. Hydraulics hissed, lowering the heavy reinforced door slowly into the wooden floor. It latched into place, matching the planks on the floor and blending cleanly with the pattern. She sighed a shuddering breath, which hitched into a cough. She rattled a few ribs with her coughs and ended up hacking up a handful of feathers. Looking to the center of the wedge shaped bedroom, she saw the glass wall of the round fire pit that warmed the house. Through the glass and flame, she saw the living room, and that the front door was open.

She passed through the kitchen, depositing the damp feathers into the trash, and moved into the living room, seeing her guest more clearly. He wore a black leather jacket over a gray hooded sweatshirt, jeans and a look of irritation thinly veiled with curiosity. He looked at her when she entered. She smiled as warmly as she could. "You must be Alex Mercer. Thanks for coming on such short notice."

"Who are you?"

"Aisling Parishii." She answered honestly, knowing that any lie she fed him now was going to come back and bite her. Heck, even having him do this was going to bite her. She was going to have a few messy deaths to pay for getting this group of hunters under control. And that was just supposing that he didn't know what else she'd managed affect.

"How did you know where to find me?" He asked flatly.

She shrugged, and held the motion, spreading as confused a look across her face as she could. "I heard you were into research of viruses."

He chuckled, though the sound wasn't really happy. "Your information is a little dated." He turned to leave.

"But you cured that thing in New York!" She said with a healthy dose of confusion. "I saw it on the news!"

"Is that what they said?" He stopped, turning back to her with one eyebrow hitched considerably higher than the other. "I wonder who said that." He mumbled to himself, though it didn't seem like much of a mystery to him. He still hadn't been able to track Dana down, but he'd picked up on her presence on the internet. She was spreading stories. Propaganda. Why? Something he'd have to ask her when he finally tracked her down. He turned fully to face her and folded his arms. "What do you want?"

"I've got a few guys that caught the Green Flu." She started.

"The mutations are too damaging for recovery from that. You may as well just shoot them." He cut her off. He cocked his head slightly to one side, some semblance of sympathy flickering across his eyes. "Friends of yours?"

She bit her lip and frowned. "Some of them." She admitted sadly, and with out forcing the tone. There would be no saving Malik's boys. That's what she always called them. Malik's boys and girls, no matter how many generations removed they were. She already knew the extent of the damage the virus did to the human body, and already knew there was no full recovery from it. Part of her heart went out to the girl still in Denver with her two hunters, and she hoped the girl didn't decide to try and get them cured. She knew there was no bringing these last two of Malik's boys back, but she needed to get them under control. On a leash of sorts because she certainly couldn't keep them drugged in the basement for the next eight years until they got their hands on that one girl that would be the miracle worker of human cloning. She faked a sniffle and continued. "They were hard to catch too."

"You caught them?"

"They're drugged in the garage out back." She pointed over her shoulder without much enthusiasm. "Is there anything you can do?"

"I can kill them for you." He offered with disturbing seriousness.

"No. Can't you change the virus? Make them at least a little like they were?" She asked with a sigh.

"No." He said, starting to turn again. "They're pretty much gone." He stopped at the door. The questions she was asking were very pointed. Very detailed, and what she was asking him to do was beyond normal human capability, even with a top of the line lab. It was as if she knew what he could do. What he was. Like the Blackwatch turncoat that had approached him only a month ago in Fairfield. He wanted a cure for a virus. The virus that turned out to be what CEDA named the Green Flu, though it wasn't a flu at all. It was some bastardized hybrid of a mutated strain of rabies and Blacklight. He turned back to look at her. "How about you drop the act and tell me what it is you really called me for."

She pursed her lips, irritated that he was so perceptive. With no hint of misery in her voice she answered. "I need you to rework the virus. Make them more controllable. Less instinct. More thought. Less contagious. I know you can."

He smirked, finally having the answer he'd needed without having to threaten her. She knew exactly what he could do, but how? Pulling the door closed, he turned back to her again. "And what are you going to do with them? I'm going to bet you've got some of the witches, or maybe the hoodies. Am I right?" He accented his own name of the hunters by tugging on his own hood.

She blinked, unfamiliar with either term. "No.. I've got thirty-six hunters doped up in the garage. I just want to stay here, and use them to make that a little easier to do."

"Hunters?" He repeated the name, remembering the hunters of the Redlight virus. He didn't know any formal names for the mutations of the Green Flu.

"I guess you could call them hoodies." She said, scratching her head. "It's what they all seem to wear."

"What's in it for me?" He asked.

"You could probably market whatever you come up with." She offered, knowing that whatever she offered wouldn't matter. His curiosity on the matter would be enough to get his help.

"Maybe." He said noncommittally. No grand offers of money. Maybe she wasn't the one behind that Blackwatch guy before. He wasn't sure.

"Will you do it?" She took a cautious step toward him.

He shrugged, twisting his face into a look of utter indifference. Playing along was the only way to find out more in a peaceful manner. Besides, he really hadn't tried to design any partial recoveries from the virus, only cures, which had been abysmal failures. It was the least he could do after starting the outbreak like he did. "Sure. Where's the garage?"

She showed him to the narrow bunker door at the edge of the trees. Opening the top door, she paused. "We bolted the bottom door. Doesn't look like they woke up, or didn't try to get through the door. Unless they figured that out and disarmed the alarm too." She added the last with a distinct tone of distaste.

He gave her a skeptical look. "You're really scared of these things aren't you?"

She grimaced. "Let's just say I had a bad run in before." He waited long enough for her to get the hint, and she started down the stairs.

"Is that when you lost them?" He asked with no malice, only curiosity. It was unlikely that any of these infected individuals would be the same ones she'd been trying to get him to cure before. He was pretty sure now that it was her. There wasn't much left of Gentek for anyone to know what he could really do, so any knowledge of his origins and capabilities would be hard earned information. "Or maybe a month ago?" He added by way of hinting that he suspected her.

"Lost them?" She looked back up at him before the meaning of his first question became clear. She seemed to ignore the second question. "Oh, no. I lost them before that. We were only in town to get them anyway. Or what was left." She stopped at the small landing at the bottom of the stairs, hearing shuffling and growling on the other side of the door. "Crap." She grunted, and rolled up one sleeve to reveal an improvised bracer with small sheaths holding six syringes of mixed sedatives.

"Looks like they're up." He said with an ironic chuckle. "They're probably building an immunity to the drugs."

"That fast?" She asked as she drew one of the syringes.

"Viruses are adaptable." He said simply.

"You'd know." She grumbled as she drew another syringe and bundled the two in her hand. If they were building an immunity this fast, she was going to need to up the doses. Sighing, she flicked off the alarm and unbolted the door.

"What?" He asked, having heard her question clearly, and wondering if she was answering his half voiced questions with only a mumbled answer. She didn't pay any heed to the question and pushed the door inward. It was dark inside, and he immediately switched to infrared vision. There were warmer bodies littering the floor. A few were markedly cooler. There was glass scattered across the floor from broken lights, catching the heat and reflecting shards of light. Looking up, he saw the quick movements in he exposed rafters.

"They took out the lights." She said dumbly. "Why would they...?" A loud scream cut off her question as one of the forms launched from the rafters, smashing her flat into he concrete. Mercer just stepped back out of range, watching the diseased human tear at her with sloppy attacks. It only got three good swipes in before it slumped over. Another scream heralded another attack. He put his hand out and caught it mid air, the now longer claws of his hand wrapping around its head. He slammed it into the concrete wall, and long sinewy tendrils wrapped around it. Aisling just barely cleared her head enough to see half of its body erupt into a hazy red and black cloud of flesh. The cloud took shape, forming more tendrils that arced back into Mercer's body. "NO! Don't do that!" She wailed, pushing the now sedated hunter off her and tossing aside the two syringes she'd used to fight it off. She found her feet by the time the body had been fully absorbed.

"What?" Mercer asked, confused as to what had upset her so, and why she wasn't more worried about the gaping wounds across her chest, neck and face, and the fact of what she'd just seen.

"Oh God! Which one did you eat?" She asked, tugging on his sleeve.

He looked past her a moment, making sure there weren't any other lucid infected in there. The remaining warmth was spread across the floor, and he doubted they had the capacity to play dead for a trap, or even self-preservation. They didn't show excessive aptitude for self-preservation. Of course, at this point, the girl didn't either. He realized suddenly the reason for her panic. She'd said she was trying to save a few friends. He searched his newly acquired memories. They were very jumbled and degraded from the infection, but he couldn't call forth her face from anywhere within the scattered mess. He took the shape of the hunter, and she immediately flipped the hood back, searching the face for any familiarity. Seeing none, relief washed over her, and she turned back toward the darkness of the garage. "You seem pretty calm for all this." He said, taking his own form back, since the hunter's form couldn't speak.

"For what?" She shuffled in the dark and found one of the cabinets. Keys rattled and in a moment, she produced a flashlight and flicked it on.

"The hunters. The infection. Your wounds. Me. You're more worried about your friends." He said, stepping into the room and nudging one of the colder bodies. It was dead. Shredded. Apparently the two that attacked weren't the only ones awake. He looked to where Aisling was picking her way through the scattering of limbs and torsos.

She grinned at him. "I know what you are. That's why I called you. I know you can change the Green Flu." She looked down, narrowing her eyes at the body he stood beside. "Shit. Is that one dead?"

"Yeah. Looks like they were fighting. There's only two dead here." He looked down at them. They all looked pretty similar to his eyes. Bloody, messy and infected. He had yet to see how she could tell them apart.

She was already checking the faces of the two dead hunters, and they apparently weren't the ones she was looking for. Her face wasn't elated at the fact, but flat and serious. "Thank you." She said quietly, and stood.

"For what?"

"For helping." She said, moving toward the door. "Looks like you can see in the dark, but if you need some lights, there's some more bulbs in the cabinets against that wall." She tossed him the keys.

He caught them, watching her click off the light, place it on the floor and leave. After a moment, he heard the heavy thump of the outer door. He imagined the darkness was absolute right now, but he was still seeing heat. Looking around at the littering of bodies, he shook his head. This outbreak was his fault as well. He remembered the request for help gone sour. The virus was a sample for him to use to find some cure. The man didn't know the victims. Didn't even know who'd hired him, just that Mercer could help. Mercer hadn't been receptive. He'd consumed him, and the memories of cryptic correspondence with unseen and unknown superiors still held his curiosity from time to time, but offered no leads beyond the Colorado origin of the final text message. The virus had found a fertile breeding ground in the biomass of Mercer's body, and only by the grace of the Blacklight was he able to expel it. Unfortunately, there were people around, and they'd contracted it. Where had be been? Fairview? Fairfield? He shook his head. The origin wasn't important. The effect was all around him. The cure was unattainable. The treatment usually consisted of high explosives or hot metal. That girl outside was only still alive because Dana hadn't died in the outbreak. He shook his head again, looking over the genetic alterations the virus did to the one hunter he'd consumed. He might be able to alter some strains of the Blacklight to counteract some of the effects. It wouldn't be Blacklight anymore, but that really didn't matter. The original virus was already obsolete and dead, replaced by the already Blacklight altered second generation. This would be the third. It wasn't going to be contagious. At least that's what she'd asked. He could give her the illusion of that at least. The virus responded as readily to the influence of Blacklight as the first time, and he manipulated the growth of the virus a little more this time, just as dangerous, but not so infectious. Tailor made. He frowned, not liking this, but curious to see where it would lead. Without them being infectious, he'd be able to handle anything that got unruly.

Forming his arm into a blade, he nicked one of the living hunters at his feet, injecting the altered virus. Within minutes, it was stirring. Shaking off the effects of the sedatives and sitting up. It rubbed its head, trying to clear the lingering fog before looking up at Mercer. He gave it a mental order to stand, and it obeyed. He ordered it over to the door. It obeyed. He ordered it return. It obeyed, though the motions were somewhat mechanical. It could apparently tell that it was not in control of its body, but Mercer was. How convenient. The girl wanted a small army. He'd give it to her, but if he could still take it away at any time, he didn't feel as if he were giving her a blank check. Something seemed amiss here. He looked at the hunter. The wound was already healing. Now that was unusual. He spread the infection to a couple of the other hunters. They responded similarly, but without the speed of healing. Mercer altered the virus to include that little bonus and spread the infection around.

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Aisling tapped idly on the tablet computer, trying to catch up on correspondence. One of her teams was showing promise with some weapons acquisition, but they apparently needed help finding some military grade computer equipment to use as a bribe. She responded with reassurance that she would supply it, and looked into actually finding it. She had a few military boys, and a few private sector soldiers as well. Another email had bad news within Abstergo. Apparently one of the assassins had met a bad end after dealing too closely with one of their Animus subjects. Nothing incriminating, but suspicious enough. She frowned, unsure how to deal with this one. She hadn't seen it coming, but there was just so much to try to stay abreast of that she couldn't quite keep a handle on all of it. Luckily, Lucy was in duck and cover mode, and was obviously asking questions. Good way to divert attention. That girl had a knack.

Evening had already fallen, and she'd sorted through as many problems as she could manage to either assign a place on her to do list, or delegate to someone else. The doorknob rattled, and then slowly opened. She looked up from her comfy chair by the fire, surprised that it wasn't Mercer opening the door, but a hunter in ratty clothes with a trail of dried blood tracing down one leg. It growled and grumbled as it peered in the room, then turned its head directly to her, walking more upright than she'd seen any of them move. She sat, dumbfounded as it approached. She recognized he bone structure of his jaw line. The measured grace in the movements. They were more pronounced than they'd been before. It was one of Malik's boys. "Donovan? That you?" She asked.

With a grunt, it sank into the small scattering of feathers in the floor before her. She looked up to the door, seeing Mercer standing there with a smug look of triumph. "Here's your army. Like lap dogs. That what you wanted?"

"Are you serious?" She asked incredulously. "How many?"

"Thirty three." He said as he was bumped aside by a hunter trying desperately to sneak inside. He let it pass.

It joined the other in the floor, and she couldn't help but smile. "Rashad, you too." They seemed to remember her, at least vaguely, unless Mercer had imprinted the some sort of loyalty in them already, which she seriously doubted. In fact, she had strong suspicions that he had some added bonus for him in the virus. She looked back up at Mercer. "I can't believe you could pull this off. What else did you do?"

"They regenerate faster. Might work together more now. Not sure." He said, leaning against the doorframe and folding his arms. "Don't think you'll be catching it from them." He added. "Are we done here?" There were things he needed to look into. He was hesitant to try to get answers from this girl directly, not with hunters under her control. If she knew what he could do, then she might know how he did his messier research, then might even go the way of McMullen. He was beginning to suspect that the Blackwatch man and Dana's disappearance and continuing absence were connected, and both led to this emotive little red head.

"I owe you so much." She said, standing and moving between the two hunters that had planted themselves in the floor.

"You owe me an answer for how you found me." He said in a low tone. She was walking into it. The least he could do was try to get some peaceable answers.

"I told you. I saw what you did for the outbreak in New York. You're the one still looking at that email." She said as she approached him and extending a hand. 

"Uh-huh." He grunted, taking her hand and shaking it. Truth be told, hadn't checked that email since before the real Alex Mercer died, and didn't know what had prompted him to check it that day. Granted, Denver had been doing well in the recovery to have internet back up and running again inside the quarantine zone. He'd really been hoping to have something from Dana, but there was only junk and this cryptic email with a garbled origin. He recognized it from the correspondence with the former Blacklight he'd consumed.

"I'd ask you to stay for dinner or something, but you won't, will you?" She said, her smile not diminishing.

He cocked his head to one side. She was being entirely too friendly for how she'd hinted at her awareness of his knowledge of her deceit. He knew. She knew it, but neither spoke about it outright. Why wouldn't he? What was holding him back? "No. We're done here." He said, turning and ducking out the door, wading through the collection of hunters outside the door before breaking into a run.

She stared after him. "See you in two weeks."

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a/n Sorry if these chapters seem short. This story was originally planned to be a one shot, and thus put into one file, but I felt it was too big and my comments got lost at the end of it. It got broken up at good places to stop.

As with the game, I'm not exactly sure how to manage Mercer. He seems chaotic evil, but still a heroic sociopath. There's a good streak in him, but I'm sure he's sick to death of people dealing with him like a weapon.


	3. Chapter 3

a/n Altaïr and Lucy are Ubisoft's. The hunters, and other infected mentioned are Valve's. Mercer and his viral attitude is Activision/Radical's. Aisling is mine.

Again, if you haven't read Feathers, a lot of this may not make sense.

Chapter 3

Altaïr woke up slowly. A little unusual for coming back to life. Usually it was a jerk and a gasp. This time is was a slow haze into focus. He was in the basement, and pulled himself up to sit despite the complaint of his ribs at the motion. He was on the bench beside the one of the exhaust ports for the computer that made its home beneath the stairs. It wasn't running hot, so he doubted Aisling was using it. He rubbed his neck, not surprised to see that he'd been cleaned up, and also relieved of the pants he'd tried not to dirty in his suicide. There was a fresh pair folded at the bottom of the padded bench, along with a shirt. He slipped into them, not surprised to find a knife tucked into one pocket of the pants, and limped up the stairs, cursing Aisling for her timing again. The muscle tears in his right thigh were a pretty common sensation by now, but never seemed to hurt any less. It was quiet in the kitchen, but he was hungry, and made a sandwich to take with him on his search for signs of life. He doubted it, but the idea of the whole plan with the hunters going horribly wrong and them being overrun with tweaked out super-zombies still poked its head through his better judgment. He noted a tablet on one of the chairs in the living room, and tapped the screen. It lit up. 2 October, 2009. He'd been out for two days. That wasn't an unusual amount of time.

She was nowhere in the house, and there was no sign of foul play. No dismembered bodies. No blood. Nothing. Not even an out of place blanket. He went outside and circled the small round house. The leaves were turning, and the aspens were glowing gold in the morning light. He watched the trees blow in the breeze for a moment, listening to the leaves and the wind. Then he heard it. A dissonant crunch. He saw it. A flicker of movement, followed quickly by a handful of other darting shadows. Rustling in the leaves very nearby. A growl. He looked toward the noise, drawing his knife in the same motion. He heard the scream, saw the hunter emerge from the trees at full speed, then leap into the air. He flipped the knife open and threw it. The hunter screeched and spiraled off to the right, hitting the ground just behind him. He turned to his left in time to see the second hunter pounce. He took a step back, ready to dodge the attack, but the first hunter snagged his ankle. He tripped, falling out of the trajectory of the second hunter, but it rebounded quickly and was already upon him.

"PALAK!" Altaïr heard the definitely human scream, and was relieved to hear proof that Aisling was alive. "Stop!" The order cut off into a cough. The second hunter stepped off of him, standing up its full nearly two meters of height. The first hunter released his legs and pushed itself up to sit, gurgling around the knife in its neck.

Altaïr pushed himself up to sit, and the hunter called Palak offered him a hand. He took it, hesitantly and stood somewhat unsteadily. He'd aggravated his right leg a little more than usual, and it was now protesting any weight on it. Palak turned away from him, instead kneeling by the hunter still sitting on the ground. Altaïr looked around, seeing Aisling approaching quickly from the direction of the garage. Her clothes were dusty, and she had feathers, twigs and leaves tangled in her hair. She was flanked by five other hunters in grimy sweatshirts of indefinable color. They all made a fine chorus of grunts and growls, looking around as if they had eyes with which to see.

"Are you alright?" She called as she approached.

"Yeah." He looked at her odd party. "I take it your plan worked this time."

"Yeah." She smiled over her shoulder at the others and patted one of them in the stomach. It made a sneer of irritation and swatted at her hand. She laughed at the motion. "They're still not all there though, and most of them don't remember much of before they were infected. Might be a good thing."

"So no cure?" He felt a nudge against his hand, and realized he still had an iron grip on his sandwich. The peanut butter and jelly leaked out the edges of the mashed slices of bread. He looked back toward the prodding of his hand, and saw the other two hunters behind him. Palak had the knife in hand, and was trying to give it back. Altaïr shifted the sandwich to his other hand and took it, noting that the first hunter wasn't dead, but was holding the wound on its neck.

"No." She sighed. "The virus does too much damage."

"Any of ours get it?" He inspected the rough grain bread for any dirt or other debris.

"Not that I've heard." She lied as she finally caught up to him and noticed the two hunters behind him. "Aww.." She groaned her disappointment. "You're shanking them already?" She passed him to kneel by the hunter, who stared at her blankly while blood and air gurgled out around its fingers. "Awww.. Ettore. You've got to watch out of him. He's got sharper claws than you."

The hunter exhaled in a pattern that Altaïr could've mistaken for a chuckle. "Don't tell me you've got them named." Altaïr said, rolling his eyes.

"No. Not yet." She said, tearing off a dangling strip of the hunter's shirt to tie around its throat. "I'm still mixing them up. I need to get them some different colored hoodies or something."

"Hoodies?" Altaïr said, taking a bite of the sandwich.

"Their jackets." She said, making a motion above her head to indicate the hoods. "They don't like to have their heads uncovered."

"Like Jews, huh?" Altaïr said around a mouthful of jelly and bread.

"Watch it." She grumbled, still applying pressure to the wound while the hunter simply sat there waiting for her to finish.

He shook his head, not feeling the threat in the least. "What do they care?"

"I think it has to do with how they see." She said distractedly as she flipped Ettore's hood back to tighten the bandage.

Altaïr watched the hunter grimace and bring a hand up to his face. Aisling smacked it away, so he settled into growling and making faces while she worked the knot in the fabric at the back of his neck. "They see?" He asked skeptically.

"By sound, I guess. How else could they move like they do?" She looked over her shoulder at Altaïr, missing the humor of the statement. "Have you ever seen them run into anything?"

He shrugged. Hadn't really paid attention since they didn't get too close. He realized now that they didn't have to get very close to pounce though, and he'd have to keep a closer eye on them from now on. "So what are you going to do with them now?"

"Well, now anybody wanting to come visit has to go through them first." She said, finally releasing the hunter she called Ettore and standing. The hunter immediately yanked the hood back up, pulling it down to fully cover its face and sitting like that for a minute.

"Is someone coming?"

"Not for a little while, but I wanted this set up anyway, especially since you're going into stasis soon." She said holding her bloody hands out as she inspected her clothes, deemed them too clean to wipe her hands on, and wiped them on Palak's shirt instead.

"I am?"

"I thought you said you were." She said, staring skyward and thinking.

"I think that was in your head. Have you been using the computer lately?" He asked.

She nodded. "A little. Nothing too big showing up." She had a bit of clairvoyance that was much boosted by the computer wired to the basement. It drew power from a few ancient relics they'd collected over the years, and gave her far-reaching sight, both through time and distance. The ability had been around before the computer, but doing any sort of divining of the future was slow going, and tiring. It was the main reason she'd recruited Altaïr so many years ago, to have a bodyguard so she wouldn't have to devote so much time to the physical upkeep of her body. She had indeed hooked up to the computer again, and saw nothing but Mercer's return in the coming weeks. He already knew that she'd sent the Blackwatch man his way, and she imagined he was highly suspect of her involvement with his missing sister. Whatever was holding him back from those topics was a blessing on Aisling's behalf. This next visit would be brought on by his finding the trail of her manipulation in his job search. He was smart, and likely very angry. She frowned.

"Anything from Lucy?" He asked, ignoring her frown and taking another bite of his sandwich.

"They're pushing them too hard." Aisling said, looking down at the leaves on the ground a moment before meeting his eyes again with a remorseful sigh. "I'm so sorry."

He shrugged. "What can we do? It's the bloodline that damns them, not your choices."

"I know.." She sighed again. "I know."

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A couple days later, she decided she couldn't come up with enough fabric to make clothes for her little platoon of near undead. She was coughing when she exited the house, but found her voice as she approached. "Do we need anything while I'm out?" She dropped a handful of downy feathers over his head.

"Aren't you just going down to Winter Park?" He asked from where he was sitting in the grass, taking in the last bit of warmth the fall had to offer. He brushed off the feathers without even looking up at her.

"Yeah. There should be some clothes stores left over there. Want some of them to stay here?" She said, cinching a hiking pack onto her torso.

"No." He said firmly. As much as she'd found every endearing trait to name each hunter from, he had no love for the creatures. They creeped him out, and he had trouble seeing beyond their 'tool' status. Sure the same could probably be said of him at times, but at least he could pass for a living human. "Are you taking a quad?" He asked as he hooked up one of the Eden interfaces to the computer. The Eden interfaces were a merciful discovery from about ten years ago. One of the old relics had hooked itself up to a computer that was originally being used to record information that said relic was slowly giving up. With that connection, it had revealed how to connect those old toys to the both more modern and yet much more primitive technology of their computers. The prototype was built within a week, and Aisling had it in her computer inside of two months, amplifying her clairvoyance and turning the tide of the informational war. For now, though, Altaïr was just using the interface to do a little research. The computer bogged down with the connection, as it always did.

"Nah. Have you seen how fast these guys are?" She said motioning toward the crowd of hunters milling around beneath the mimosa trees.

"I know they're fast. What about you?" He looked up at her with a bit of a smirk while he waited for the interface to finish loading.

She pouted a moment at the jab. She was fast when she needed to be, though keeping an eye out five minutes ahead was pretty helpful in that, but even then she didn't even come close to matching his speed. He could leave her in the dust, unless she resorted to underhanded tricks, like tripwires. She made a rather immature face at him before finally letting the insult roll off her back. "I think I'll bum a ride."

"Have fun." He grunted, looking back at the computer, which was finally up to speed. He really didn't want to know the details of her idiocy this time. He did glance up as he heard her retreating footsteps. She joined the group and ordered a march. Almost a dozen took off on all fours in bounding strides. One of those that hesitated grabbed her pack and hauled her off the ground before taking off with the others. The cacophony of growls and yells receded into the woods and Altaïr could only shake his head. That girl wasn't above any means to an end. He'd thought himself pretty adaptable, but she made him look a little abtuse at times.

The afternoon cooled to evening before he finally relocated inside the house. He'd come across a few other metallurgical processes and something using carbon in a crystalline form. He didn't see the immediate usefulness, but sent it on to a few dev groups anyway. The responses were full of excitement, so he figured there might be some good in the old tech. An audio encoding program downloaded itself onto his computer, which, again, he didn't see much use for right now, but he kept it anyway. After that, he checked into Aisling's logs to see if there was anything she was missing follow-ups on. There was. Of course. He rolled his eyes, not surprised in the least as he checked into the flagged logs and schedules. He spent as much time acquainting himself with the background information of most of the projects as he did answering, reporting or otherwise checking up on their teams. Again he was surprised how much she juggled to maintain the delicate balance of cause and effect she orchestrated into plans and timelines. He didn't have much time to stand in awe over the web, though, because one of the reminders seemed well removed from the brotherhood. It said 'High voltage for Mercer.' He knew what that meant. Remembered well that electricity was about the only thing to make that inhuman creature even check his step. If Aisling was arming up for dealing with him, and no travel plans scheduled, then it meant that he knew exactly where they were, and was likely already on his way. Altaïr poked around in her email and found it. She'd already contacted him. The email spoke of a meeting date that had already passed. Viruses. Supposed research. So he was the science wizard she had come to fix the hunters. Of course. A virus against a virus. That's why she'd said he wouldn't live long enough. He figured it was a lie, but what difference did it make? He frowned, sure that she knew the explosive capacity of the firecracker she was playing with. What little trust he had in the hunters eroded knowing that Mercer was viral control incarnate, and with his tinkering with the virus infecting the hunters, the little death beasts were probably under his direct control. Perhaps not constant, considering how they'd been acting. They seemed to be regaining some semblance of humanity, but that could also be Mercer messing with his and Aisling's heads. He shook his head, trying to clear the apprehension, and rubbed his temples with considerable force. Not everyone put so many layers of planning into their actions, and he might just be paranoid. Would it matter if he were wrong? Maybe not so much as if he was right. He heard the approach of the group and decided he may as well go out to meet them.

Outside, there were no lights, but his eyes adjusted quickly. He could see flickers of movement approaching quickly, and even the occasional flare of light. He narrowed his eyes, staring into the darkness and seeking the light of intentions. A blanket of a blue aura spread through the woods before him, with a beacon of gold interspersed. The normal light flared again, revealing it to be a flashlight Aisling was wielding in spurts of illumination. She looked taller, and he squinted, seeing again as she lit up the area again that she was actually trick surfing on two of the hunters as they bounded on all fours through the uneven terrain. He remembered her equestrian skills were mediocre at best, but this took the cake. The leading few hunters slowed, standing more upright and slowing to a jog. The rest followed suit, even the ones carrying Aisling, and she tipped backward into the dirt, rolling end over end, the flashlight flying loose and lighting up the area. One of the hunters now wearing red caught her by the pack she wore and deposited her on her feet. Another grabbed the flashlight, trying a few unsuccessful attempts to turn it off before it began to chew on it. Aisling snatched it away and turned to Altaïr. "Hey!" The light caught on his face, and she saw his less than humored expression. "Oh. Hey." She said again, this time with much less enthusiasm. "You got on my computer, didn't you?"

He nodded. "Why Mercer?" He asked.

She sighed and shooed the hunters off. They moved off into the darkness, some of them a little less willingly than others. "Nobody else could've done it."

"Why hide it?" He folded his arms, hearing the growls and grumbles all around them now. Only the vague blue outlines gave their locations away.

"I really don't try to make you miserable. I try to spare you a lot of it." She gesticulated uselessly. "I'm sorry." She said more quietly.

"I'm not miserable."

She ignored the reassurance. "And I guess you got me caught up on correspondence?"

"I flagged the ones you'll need to break out the clairvoyance on." He turned toward the rectangle of light that was the open front door. "And the guys in GADA sent you a message about the diving gear. It's finally out of testing."

"Awesome!" She grinned and rubbed her hands together. About time that she might be able to get some interface implants. Would make dealing with the computer so much faster and easier. She already had a surface interface rig inside, but the connections were a little iffy. One of the skin patches being even three millimeters off would throw off the whole program. The rig helped to line everything up properly, but even that wasn't fast or easy to get into or out of. "They give a time?"

"March next year."

"Oh." She said, somewhat crestfallen. "I didn't see that one." It was true. A lot was slipping through the cracks now. There was just so much to follow. So many seemingly random events to either engineer or to find out if they could be useful. It had seemed easy at first, until the ties of the Assassins and the truth of their bloodlines came to light. It all went so much deeper than she could've imagined, as her unaided ability really only gave her foresight, not hindsight, and she'd even found that the assassins were doing good long before they were organized, and organized long before she ever met Hassan at Alamut. She was somewhat reassured that even she wasn't the controlling factor of everything. It took a little weight off her shoulders, while at the same time adding an uncomfortable element of chaos to the situation.

Altaïr chose not to answer. She was distracted by something, and it was pretty obvious she had been spreading herself thin with the computer, which was the main reason he left her to idiocy in dealing with the hunters. She needed a break, and if playing with infantile zombies made her happy, then by all means under the sun, let her be happy. He plucked the pack off her back once she'd unclipped the belts on front. "You hungry?"

"No. I found some beef jerky at one of the gas stations on the way." She said with a little grin. "I found some stuff for you. Thought you'd like it. It's in there."

He was already opening the bag, tossing aside bags of jerky, spools of thread and rolls of duct tape until he came to another smaller bag in the bottom. It didn't have much bulk, but it was long, at least forty centimeters. He pulled it out and opened the drawstrings, finding some small non-lethal electric weapons. The longest of which was a stun baton. A retractable cattle prod adopted by the police in the last few years. At its smallest, it was forty centimeters, at its longest, seventy. Even without power, the batteries inside gave it good heft. "These are for Mercer." He said, remembering the brief moment that he'd managed to draw Mercer into a power station in New York. The electricity had slowed him, unlike the hail of bullets Altaïr had served up at first. Mercer even started making a point to dodge the second wave of electricity, but in the end, he was just too fast. Altaïr shook off that memory.

"Thought you'd like them." She said again.

"Yeah. I do." He smiled. "When will we expect him?"

"Ten days." She said. "He'll know about our guy in HR at Gentek by then."

"Ugh. How many people are we going to lose for him to get that information?"

Aisling's eyes rolled high in her skull, and she closed her eyes. After a moment, she spoke, her eyes still closed. "Three direct. Two contacts. Five affiliates." She opened her eyes again as they recentered. "Good thing is that one of them won't be you."

"So you know what's going to happen?"

She nodded.

"Anything I should make sure to do?" He asked, knowing there were a few key factors that could turn the stream of time to a completely different scenario. "Or shouldn't." He added.

"Don't be here when he gets here." She said. "He's going to come back and use the hunters to beat the stuffing out of both of us once he finds out he can't absorb me. If you're here, you die, and I really need you to stay alive this time."

He frowned at that. Things were going to get ugly. Her mention of Mercer being unable to absorb her was reassuring. He was wondering if it had only been a fluke that had saved him in New York. "Yeah, he was pretty mad when he found out I was 'unfit for consumption.'" He said the phrase with a pause as he recalled the terms that Mercer had used.

"Yeah, you're welcome." She grunted.

"Oh, that's part of your gift too?" He flicked the baton on, and it emitted a low hum.

"Yeah. It messes with your DNA on some nano level, or that's what the genome sequencing techs said." She said with a little shrug. "I guess Blacklight can't metabolize it."

"Lucky for us. How long did you know about that?"

She gave him a nervous smile. "It was because of the subject they used to incubate the original Redlight. The genetic sequence had a lot of anomalies that let the virus work with it, rather than destroying it."

"We gave them that subject, didn't we?" He followed the logic.

Her smile became somewhat pained. "Yeah. We did."

He laid a hand on her shoulder and gave her a little shake. "Don't feel bad. Every assassin knows the danger of the job." She closed her eyes and nodded, and he decided to distract her. "So the hunters don't stink as bad as they did."

She laughed aloud. "Yeah, they smelled like a mass grave, didn't they? I got them all new clothes from some of the shops down south, and got them cleaned up."

He raised his eyebrows at her. "How did you manage to wash thirty three full grown men with minds somewhere between four year old humans and dogs?"

She laughed again and moved over to the fire. "Are you kidding me? I ran them through a car wash. It was a scream. You should've seen it. That whole dog aspect really came alive!"

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a/n And yes. Altaïr likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Shut up.

I hurt my head sometimes when I try to shuffle three different decks of canon together and make them still work……


	4. Chapter 4

a/n Altaïr is Ubisoft's. The hunters, and other infected mentioned are Valve's. Mercer and his viral attitude is Activision/Radical's. Aisling is mine.

Again, if you haven't read Feathers, a lot of this may not make sense.

Chapter 4

The next few days were a lot calmer than Altaïr would've expected. Aisling didn't seem apprehensive, and it leeched his worry away. His instructions in this matter were simple. Be scarce. She was spending more time in the computer, twitching as the merged technologies forced her clairvoyance into high gear. It was a little unsettling to watch, and he was bored doing anything else. He could occupy himself with a battered guitar he'd kept for quite a few years now, and was quite surprised that whenever he did so, a multitude of curious faces blocked the narrow windows, darkening the room considerably. So he took it outside and the hunters scattered like feathers on the wind, leaving only vague blue trails of light only his eagle vision could pick up. He sat down cross-legged in the grass and continued to play. He was hardly in the second reprise of a Spanish inspired piece before the first hunter crawled out of its hiding place beneath the trees, shambled to its feet and moved slowly across the grass. He looked up at it, not breaking the melody and gave it a little nod. A jagged and bloody grin spread across its face, revealing three missing teeth on the upper left, and it flopped down in front of him, pushing up untaped orange sleeves to reveal a spattering of scars that looked like a spray of sparks. It mimicked his cross-legged pose and leaned forward on one elbow to listen. "You must be Trace." He said, feeling foolish for trying to strike up a conversation. He moved on to another improvised tune, this time more eastern, though putting the proper twang in the strings was difficult on this style of guitar. "Aisling says she bets you played hockey." Again it grinned, but said nothing. Another hunter joined them, this one wearing bright, neon green over black pants. He wondered how, with that color, it ever blended. What was this one's name? Nole? He wasn't sure. It sat down to listen as well, and more joined until he was three songs later and sure that he'd collected the entire platoon.

Finishing up a more modern and rock song that had ironically been about zombies, he finally stopped, and propped his arms on the body of the guitar. "Alright. You like music. I've got the message. Can any of you speak?"

A few grunts, a few growls, one yell, and a whimper, but no words.

He sighed. "Aisling said you can't, but you understand?" There were a few nods in the circle of attentive faces. "Which of you is Akash?" A black clad sleeve from the back of the crowd raised to his right. "How many of you wear red?" Elementary questions, but Aisling had been commenting at their limited intellect and trying to teach them, but it seemed that their minds were incapable of much abstract thought. Five hands went up, two wearing red, two in maroon and one in a red leaning orange. Standing up, he scanned the crowd. None of the others should've raised their hands for that question, and he wondered again just how their vision worked. "She also says you're fast. How many of you are faster than her?" Every single hunter raised its hand, and he laughed aloud. "Alright, sounds good. Running has been boring lately." He said, wading through the hunters that had sat themselves behind him and putting the guitar just inside the door and grabbing a pair of lightweight boots to slip into. Mentality was somewhat proven according to Aisling's diagnosis, so he figured he'd test their physical capabilities. "Let's take a little jog." He knew now how Aisling felt when he took a notion to be silent, and her incessant urge to speak just to hear noise at those times. A few of the hunters stood as he fished his hidden blade out of one of the boots before putting them on, as well as the hidden blade and started out toward the trees heading west. They fell quickly in behind his lead, running through the trees, some upright, some on all fours, some of them even vaulting through the trees. One of the hunters at the rear of the pack halted, turning back toward the east, seeing through the echoes of the other hunters' screams. Something was coming. It was airborne, and bigger than most of the birds around here.

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Aisling snapped back into consciousness, feeling her mind rip free of the circuits and snap back into her skull with jarring force. Her eyes and body took a moment to catch up, and when they did, she saw the room wheel around her, and the floor rush up at her. She slammed down face first, and rolled over just as Mercer's fist slammed into the floorboards she'd just occupied. Not missing a beat, he brought his other fist around, crushing it into the side of her face, shattering bone and offsetting her jaw. He planted a hand over her face, and it turned black as the sinews of shifting flesh spread over her. The virus burned into her skin, bursting capillaries and cramping muscles. Through his fingers and the growing haze of pain, she saw his face, twisted with rage, slowly going slack with confusion. He pulled his hand back, and when she thought he was going to ask her something, he brought his fist around again, twisting her head with the force of it and earning a few earnest cracks from her neck and shoulders for his efforts. She stared off under the bed. It was where her head ended up pointing, though she only had one good eye to look with now, and she couldn't feel anything but a vague tingling. She saw more human looking fingers flicker across her wavering vision, and her head turned up toward his face. In her periphery, she could see that he was sitting astride her stomach, though her stomach wouldn't confirm the sensation. "What the hell are you?" He growled.

Her good eye rolled in its socket while she tried to hold onto consciousness. She caught a glimpse of pale blue. Rai. He was here. She felt a twang of guilt. She didn't think any of the hunters would be here. She didn't remember seeing them. They were supposed to be with Altaïr. As far as she could tell, Altaïr wasn't here, and neither were any of the other hunters. Just Rai, and he looked a little green even under his unhealthy but normal gray coloring. Her head thunked against the floor, bringing her focus back around to Mercer, who still hovered over her. "Une caprice de la nature.." -A freak of nature..- She breathed, her jaw wouldn't even move. His face twisted into confusion again. "Mentir… incassable.." -Lie… unbreakable..- She continued.

"What are you?" He yelled again, frustrated that she wasn't making sense. Angry that he couldn't consume her for answers, and was now left with this battered body still holding the answers just out of his reach. How could he not consume her? Just what was she?

"Unfit.." She mumbled. "For consumption."

"But good enough for answers."

She breathed a rueful chuckle, though with her lower jaw offset by a good four centimeters, there was no smile to accompany it. "Oui." -Yes.-

His rage tempered into smug satisfaction. "You got me hired at Gentek. You had them looking for me. Why?"

"Love is a verb."

"What?"

"Love is a verb." She said again, this time with a slight gurgle to it. Blood was running from her skin, leaking from the pores around burst vessels.

"What the hell does that mean?" He growled, and she saw flickers of black shape shifting movement. He was doing something to her body, but she couldn't see. With more confusion he looked down at her body and spoke again. "Can't you feel anything?"

"Guess not." She grunted. He grabbed her hand and lifted it so she could see. She was down a finger, and the blood was still seeping out of the fresh wound.

He dropped her hand. It flopped over her face before sliding to the floor. "Broke your fucking neck. What a waste." He growled. How could he torture information out of her if she couldn't feel anything? What more did he have to take from her at this point? "What were you trying to do?"

"Fire of a confession.." She mumbled. "There's no teardrop here."

He ground out a few obscenities. She was worthless, probably had all the answers locked up in her head and even that was all falling apart. Nothing was going to come out of there in any intelligible form. He formed his left hand into a blade, drawing it back to finish her, but paused, catching a glimpse of the agitated hunter he'd forgotten that he'd brought inside. A smile spread across his face. Maybe he did have a bit more to take from her. "Infect her." He said. The hunter stared at him, slack jawed and aghast. "Move!" He ordered, and the hunter jerked mechanically into motion.

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It was late when Altaïr finally made it back to the house. The hunters were indeed good runners, and had found a few steep valleys in the area, which had provided plenty of entertainment once he'd decided that the snowmelt pool at the bottom of one of the cliffs was deep enough to absorb the shock of a twelve meter drop. On the way back, he'd finally started falling behind. He could match their speed, but not their stamina. Some ran on ahead, others slowed to continue to run with him. When the speed demons came back with redoubled speed and shriller cries than usual, he knew something was amiss, and sped up his run. The house came into view, light spilling out the front door. When he got closer, he saw that the door had been smashed in, and only splinters remained around the hinges. He didn't break stride as he blew through the other destroyed door to Aisling's room. He slid to a halt, seeing her feet sticking out from the end of the bed on the floor. The diving rig for her computer was twisted at strange angles, and still flickering lights along the arms. The floor on that entire side of the bed was slick with blood, and Aisling was covered in it, though she had no large wounds to pour out such an immense amount of blood. The index finger of her right hand was missing, and her face had been smashed on the left side beyond any real recognition. Her shirt and pants were shredded from her ribs to her knees, and shallow gouges of claw marks indicated what had torn them. She was sprawled out across the floor, arms wide. He knelt next to her, seeing the slight shallow rise of her chest. She was still breathing, but didn't seem to be conscious. He gave her a little shake. Her head fell to the side, revealing just how much damage had been done to that one side. Bone was visible in many places through the broken skin and matted hair, and the overall shape of the side of her skull sank in a good four centimeters than it should've. Her unseeing eyes seemed to sharpen back into some sort of awareness. "confession.." She mumbled. "-fire.. verb..-" She shifted to mandarin Chinese in her mumbling.

How she was still alive, he couldn't fathom, and he was willing to bet that her speaking had to do with what was very likely extreme brain damage. Something that wouldn't heal quickly or easily. "He was early." He grumbled, flicking out the hidden blade and jamming it into the right side of her chest. She only started coughing up feathers and blood. Confused at how he could miss his mark, he pulled the blade out and stuck her again.

"Arrêtes-le." -Stop it.- She gurgled in French. He stared down at her, not quite understanding the slurred speech. "-Stop it.-" She said again, this time in Arabic, and he understood, though he questioned whether she meant his attempts to kill her, or that she was just rambling.

"Why aren't you dead?" He asked, finding a dry scrap of fabric discarded on the bed and wiping her face somewhat clean. She picked her head up to look at him, blinking quickly and evidently coming back to coherence. Confusion was written as clearly on her face as it was on his.

"Ha." She said flatly, finally coming back to English and bringing one hand up to the crushed side of her forehead. "That's my favorite question."

"I mean it this time." He said, taking her arm and helping her to sit up. "You're bleeding out on the floor." He motioned to the two small rivulets of blood occasionally spurting out of the holes in her chest.

"Like you meant it the first time." She said as she looked down at it, and raised her hands as if to act, but they froze in the air, lost as to a reaction. Then she took the cloth from him. It was a sock, and she pressed it over the wounds as it quickly became saturated. "Crap. What is this?"

"What did he do to you?" He asked before looking over his shoulder and noticing that there were two hunters standing in the doorframe, mouths hanging open. "Get the first aid kit out of the kitchen!" He barked, and turned back to her.

She rubbed her head with her free hand before looking at it. It was blackening from her fingertips upward. "Uh. Mercer hit me. Pretty hard. A few times." She closed her eyes, trying to pull out the hazy memories from the painful fog. "Then Rai kicked me. Then you stabbed me. Where were you?"

"Taking a run." He said. One of the hunters came back, arms loaded with random odds it had grabbed from the kitchen.

Aisling smiled up at him, placing a bloody handprint on his green sleeve as he dumped what he'd collected. A wooden box of steak knives, a tin of cereal, the first aid kit, a bag of onions, and a few other things that she imagined seemed like a kit to the befuddled hunter. "You grabbed anything that looked like a kit, didn't you, Ryan?"

Altaïr tossed most of it aside, and dropped the first aid kit onto the floor, seeing what he could find in it to get her mended. He found a one shot, and jabbed it into one of the holes in her chest. It dispensed the gel, and as it expanded, foam bubbled out the second wound. That done, he looked at her face, completely at a loss. The bones around her left eye were smashed in, and her eye was destroyed somewhere in the wreckage. Her nose was more than a little off centered, and her jaw didn't line up quite properly, though it was moving well enough. He was no plastic surgeon, and that was what her face really needed. "Let's get you hosed off." He said, picking her up off the floor. To the hunters still hovering, and the four others that had crowded into the doorway, he simply told them to try to clean up as much of the blood as they could.

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Altaïr waited for the rest of the night, half expecting Mercer to return. He'd had the hunters guard the door, which they did with gusto. Altaïr armed himself with the electric weapons Aisling had brought back, and even tucked his piece of Eden into a pouch that he strung around his neck. Virus or not, Mercer might respond to the relic. He'd started out as human, right? He poked his head into Aisling's room occasionally, and by midmorning, when he looked, she wasn't in the bed. He walked on into the room, seeing her curled up in the floor beneath the hearth of the fire pit. "Aisling, what are you doing?"

She jumped at his words, and turned wild eyes toward him. Recognition flooded in, and she smiled, though the look was unsettling. Her face had restructured itself, though the bruising was still evident, and her skin was very pale. "I like it here." She said, but stood up just the same.

"What did he do to you?" He asked again, cocking his head to one side, unsure about her smile in this situation.

"Does it matter? I can heal without dying now. That's pretty awesome. I don't remember the Blacklight being able to do that though." She said, her gaze going by him toward the door. There was a hunter in dark green leaning around the doorframe, worry evident in his stance. "I'm fine, Maddox. Don't worry so much." She said, moving across the room. The hunter towered over her by more than thirty centimeters, and stared down at her with a sad twist to his face. Leaning forward, he sniffed the air above her, and the frown twisted further before he backed away from her. She looked back at Altaïr.

His face pulled into a look of irony as he deciphered the hunter's reaction. "You said he made them not contagious."

"He said he made them less contagious." She said with a sigh. "What happens if I'm infected and can't even die?"

"What happens if you're infected and can be consumed?"

Her face went slack. "Shit." She spat. "I've got to…" She looked around for something, anything to wound herself with. "I've gotta.."

"You've got to rest." He grabbed her shoulders and wheeled her back toward the bed and pushed her down to sit. "Who can help us with this?"

She twisted the flannel pajamas between her blackened fingers. "Mercer."

"Who else."

"There isn't anybody else!" She wailed, tearing a handful of the hem off her shirt and staring at it in surprise.

"Calm down." He pulled the scrap of fabric away from her, took her hands, folded them and put them in her lap. He turned away, pacing to the door, and the three worried hunters there, stared at them a moment before digging his knuckles into his temples and turning away. Clear, bright sunlight streamed in the windows, casting long rectangles across the stained floorboards. "Yelling isn't going to solve anything."

"But this messes up everything!" Aisling sniveled, tears starting down her face. "I can't even see anything anymore."

"What do you mean?" He asked, turning back to her. 

"I can't see ahead anymore! It's gone!" She dug her fingers into her thighs, trying to ground the admission out of existence. She sniffled and started coughing.

"Ugh." He grunted. That was her best asset. What would they do without that? Most of their plans revolved on her laying out the path through the minefield of consequences. Without that, what could they do? The information these days was too well controlled, too well protected. They had ways to find spies. They had ways to find them all. Only by Aisling's orders of movements or contrived distractions did were they able to elude the templars. Now she seemed too resilient to die, and it felt risky to kill her. She'd said their pseudo-immortality prevented Mercer from consuming them because of their genetics. And Mercer had altered this virus. Could he have orchestrated this? No. That would imply that he knew that Aisling couldn't be consumed. No. Not even then. If he could alter the hunters, why not alter Aisling's DNA. Some viruses did that, right? That's what made them the best delivery of gene therapy. He shook his head, trying to clear the cloud of worry and confusion. He needed a clear head.

"Wait.. No." She said, raising a hand in front of her as if trying to touch something only she could see. "I can still.. It's different now.. Mercer's coming. He's… going to try again. To see what I know. Eden. It works on him. I see it. I see it all. Desmond. He's the one. Hate to pick, but it's got to be him. The others won't last through the second animus. And more. Farther. Those who came before. They'll come again. No. Made again. It's there. It's there." She said, her explanation muddying as she seemed to get lost in her own mind. She was starting to shake much like she did under the influence of the computer's connection rig.

"Aisling!" He shook her. "Where are you going?"

Her eyes refocused on him. "Tomorrow. Use the piece of Eden. Make Mercer help. I need to die. I'll come back, but he's the only one that can kill me."

"Why him?" He asked, letting her go. Her explanation seemed rushed, maybe a little panicked.

"You can't get enough guns in time." She said, a flicker of madness and gold going through her teary eyes. "He's got it. He'll do it. Keep him under control. You only get one shot."

"One shot for what?" He asked, confused at this sudden outpouring of instruction.

"I need. I need to sleep now." She pulled her legs up to her chest and let herself sink onto her side. A shudder went over her body. "Bye." She said softly, and sniffled again.

He didn't like the sound of that. It smacked of parting words. He backed out of the room, as she already seemed to be asleep. He posted three hunters in the living room and three in his own room, blocking the two exits from her room. Four more, he posted by the narrow windows of her room. He had a bad feeling about this.

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The evening shadows were stretching long when he heard movement again. He'd dozed at the kitchen table, his head propped on one hand and leaning over the blank screen of a hibernating tablet. A rustle woke him, and a heavy footfall pulled his attention from the tablet. He saw movement in the living room, and stood up, stretching before he went to investigate. The entire troop of hunters posted inside was moving as a group while Aisling stumbled along in the center. She appeared to be sleepwalking, and when he entered the room, all the hunters turned to look at him. He pushed a few of them aside, reaching out to catch Aisling by her shoulder. A clawed hand grabbed his other arm, yanking him back away from her with surprising force. He staggered back, turning to see a hunter in sky blue still holding his arm in a vice-like grip and shaking his head quickly, the young face looking worried. Trip, if he remembered the name. He was the only one to wear that color, he believed. Aisling had tried to school him in the names of the hunters, and he'd tried desperately to tune her out. Seems like some of it stuck, or perhaps the names were coming back to the surface as the hunters presented themselves as more than self directed weapons. "Let go." He said, pulling his arm away and turning back to Aisling. She'd stopped and turned to face him, her face slack and tearstained. She looked worse. Thinner. Wasted. Her face had healed the bruises but was waxen and colorless. Her eyes had a yellow tint, even in the iris, and they narrowed in an accusative glare. The hunters backed away as a group, widening the circle around her and looking ready to scatter. Altair followed suit, and took a step back. Her face relaxed, and she brought her hands up to her face as she turned to the door again. They had changed, he noted. The blackness had spread all the way up to her wrists, and her fingers had elongated, sprouting long, bony claws. Ten of them. Her hand had healed as well.

He hesitated, focusing his perception. A haze of blue still surrounded her. It seemed that the hunters weren't leading her, but simply following along, protecting her as instructed. They obviously knew something he didn't, and he didn't think it would he an easy task to find out what. There was only one way he could think of to go about it. He reached out again, laying a hand gently on her shoulder and calling her name.

She jumped. The hunters jumped, and a few of them scattered. Altair pulled his hand back as she whirled on him with a shriek, grabbing his still extended arm and using it as a fulcrum to flip him over her shoulder. He twisted in the air, landing heavily on one shoulder and rolling into a crouch. He'd barely set eyes on her before she closed on him, raking claws across his face with one hand and grabbing a handful of his shirt with the other. Again she threw him, but this time with more apparent ease. He sailed across the living room, catching Trip across the middle and they both went down in a heap.

Picking himself up, he saw that she was already gone, with a few of the hunters missing as well. He looked over at Trip, who shared the same look of bewilderment. "I thought your strain of the virus made you guys more civil." He grumbled, checking the depth of the gouges on his face. Four of them running parallel across his face. One across his forehead, one across the lower part of his nose, one that slashed a second mouth clean through his upper lip, and the last tore through his chin. They all needed stitches, if he had time, but he knew he didn't. He needed to follow her before she got too far. He stood up, shaking the blurriness out of his vision and wiping the blood from his brow. The slashes were bleeding into his eyes, and he finally conceded that he needed to at least stop long enough to stem the blood flow. Otherwise how could he follow when he couldn't see? A maroon hood poked around the doorframe from the kitchen. "Milo." He grunted. "You bolted." It shrugged at him and stepped out of the kitchen, holding out the first aid kit. "Yeah." He grunted. "I did bring this one on myself." He stepped into the kitchen and plunked the kit on the counter, feeling a quick pang of foolishness for projecting another half of the conversation on the hunter. Then again, they were pretty emotive with their body language if one took the moment to watch them. "She got faster. Were you able to follow her?" He looked up at the Trip and Milo, who'd remained and joined him while he cut long strips out of the gauze. They shook their heads. Milo rubbed the side of his head as if something were paining him. Altaïr ignored it for now. There was no blood. "Me either. Too fast to see her move." He growled, holding gauze in place while he wrapped bandages to secure it. After a few moments he tied off the bandage and grabbed a towel to mop up the blood he'd shed in the mean time. He glanced up at the hunters. They were fidgeting nervously. "Is Mercer close?" Trip nodded. Milo pointed off to the east. "Good." He said applying pressure to the gash on his head, which was doing a very good job of bleeding through the bandage already. "We'll wait for him then." He moved to the living room and sat down, still holding the wounds that hadn't quite finished bleeding.

He hardly had to wait. Bare minutes after settling down in one of the chairs, the hunters scattered, and the ceiling collapsed. Amid the mess of debris, was Mercer, shrouded in a blue and white swirled aura. He hopped lightly to his feet, brushing himself off with heavy misshapen hands. They shifted in a haze of red and black, taking a more normal appearance. He smirked at Altair. "Got a hold of you, didn't she?" He stuck a hand inside his hood to rub the back of his neck. "I think she might've caught something." He said, feigning ignorance.

Altair felt the flow of energy from the piece of Eden, but he heavy leather pouch concealed its light. The light surrounding Mercer flickered red before settling back into swirling blue and white. A growling uproar started outside. "She said you made them less contagious." Altaïr said, narrowing his eyes and wondering if Mercer were doing something with the hunters.

Mercer stuck his lower jaw forward in a thoughtful pout as he tried to figure out the strange sense of blissful apathy he was feeling now. The anger at Aisling's lies was gone. His irritation that this man was here instead of her was dulled. His general disgust with he hunters was nonexistent. Shaking his head slightly, not really caring at the cause of his mood swing, he answered. "I did make them less contagious."

"Evidence proves otherwise."

"Oh, I did." Mercer said with a smirk, and a return of the flickering red glow. "Takes prolonged contact with the mucous membranes to transfer now. If you know what I mean." He added with a wink.

Altair glared at him with general irritation, not knowing what that meant, and not being familiar enough with viral tendencies to even make an educated guess. It was probably bad, judging by the smirk on his face, and that alone was enough to unmotivate Altair from pursuing a more concise answer. The fact that Mercer still had enough presence of mind to be smug was troublesome. Altair had more practice utilizing the pieces of Eden than he liked to admit, so he doubted that the shortcoming was from user error. Perhaps Mercer wasn't under control at all, but how could Altair be sure? His eagle vision was hardly being reliable at this point, though that had never happened before. Perhaps the mixing of the colors meant that Mercer had no allegiance? And while he was wondering, why hadn't Aisling just put the hunters under the control of one of the pieces of Eden? Likely, he figured, that the control wouldn't last without focus, especially with there being so many of them, and that would likely lead to lots of sleepless nights. If the difficulty and doubt involved with Mercer and the relic was any intentional feat of will or genetics, Altair was willing to bet that it had been passed onto the hunters' virus. The only way he could figure to test his control of Mercer was to goad him on. "Well, if you did this, then the least you can do is help me get her back." He grumbled, standing up.

Mercer only shrugged, the aura going blue. "Sure, why not? I still need to talk to her if she still can." He turned to the door, calling over his shoulder. "Think you can keep up?"

"I did before." Altair said as he slipped into boots and lashed a harness around his torso. He slipped a long dagger into one sheath, snapped a .44 holster on the other side and hooked the stun baton onto his hip. Mercer seemed completely indifferent to his venomous tone, which truly confirmed nothing, but did lead him to believe that the relic was at least taking the edge off Mercer's malicious tendencies.

Mercer paused in the doorway, watching him arm himself with muted confusion. "Before?"

Altair snapped the stun gun on in response.

Mercer saw the small arc of electricity, and his eyes widened as recognition swept in. Red light flooded his aura. "You can't be that asshole." He said incredulously. "You should be dead."

"I get bored with that." Altair said with his own half smile. It might've come across more as a baring of teeth, though. He wasn't sure, and didn't care.

"What, being dead? You mean that's why I can't consume you?" Mercer shook his head, trying to wrap his mind around the realization. "Or her. So she won't stay dead either?" Mercer could only guess at the similarities between the two. This one obviously couldn't stay dead, and they both had exhibited a strong resistance to being consumed. He could kick himself. This would've been excellent knowledge to have before when he decided that the only way to save her life was to infect her. Apparently that idea worked if she'd healed up enough to do this kind of damage to her accomplice, but how much of her mind remained intact after the mutation? He knew his changes to the virus restored something of logic and sense, but there was no recovering what had been destroyed in the hunters, so they were limited in their cognition, but if Aisling's had never been destroyed by the original virus, there was no guess he could make as to what he would find in her mind. He couldn't begin to predict what he'd find when they finally tracked her down.

Mercer seemed to be digesting this tidbit of information, as the red faded to white again. Altaïr didn't know what he was thinking, nor did he want to. "No, but she can die, and I need you to chase her down and kill her anyway." He said, moving toward the door.

Mercer stared at him as he passed. "What are you doing to me?" He was sure that some outside force was feeding the growing numbness on his mind.

"Nothing." Altair said. "Lets go." The hunters collected outside, though there were only five still lingering. He looked over the small rabble while Mercer swaggered his way over. "Which way?"

A few of the hunters were rubbing their ears as if something was irritating them fiercely, but their attention turned to Altaïr as he spoke. They pointed, and one of them started off in the direction of the thin trail leading out to the garage. He jogged after them, pausing at the bottom of the stairs leading down to the meadow. Coming to a decision, he turned off toward the entry to the garage and snagged the quad. He had a sinking feeling that she had Mercer's speed and the hunters' stamina at this point. With the electric motor of the quad humming along, the hunters tree hopping on either side, and Mercer jogging alongside with inhumanly long strides, he decided his ego hurt, but consoled himself with the fact that a skilled man has the gift, while the successful man has the resources. They trolled over a few miles, picking up hunters that had broken off from the group to leave a trail. At the trough of a particularly rough valley, a hunter in day glow orange landed roughly on the front cargo rack of the quad. Taking the hint, he ground the quad to a halt. "What?" The hunter pointed up the hill as others dropped down out of the trees around the quad.

"She's close." One of them answered verbally. "Probably at the top of the hill. The other hunters are with her. Looks like she stopped." Altaïr looked at it quizzically before he realized that it was filthy and wearing the dingy and battered clothes they'd first found the hunters in. Judging by what he'd seen Mercer do in New York, this was the hunter he'd consumed, much to Aisling's lamenting after the fact. It looked at Altaïr, an aura of blue and white swirling around it. "What?" It said in Mercer's voice.

"I thought these things can't talk."

"They can't."

Shrugging, Altaïr hopped off the quad. If Mercer wanted to blend with the hunters, let him. He had doubts it would do too much good for him, as they seemed to use their sense of smell as much as whatever they used to see. They moved up the hill, and Altaïr could hear her. Broken sobs echoed through the trees. He'd never heard her cry like that. The brief meeting with the one infected girl in Denver flashed across his mind. This was a particular strain of the virus to change her in such a specific way. He remembered the strength in the slight frame of the girl in Denver, but she'd been no more resistant to a blade to the heart than anyone else he'd shanked. Aisling had taken two jabs to the chest that he would've bet anything had both pierced her heart. Remembering also the ease with which Aisling had dispatched him before running away, he decided it had everything to do with Mercer's tinkering with this particular strain of the virus. Judging by the sound of her sobs, she had to be close. He fished a flashlight out of his pocket and flicked it on. Her sobs cut off into a quick gasp, and in the brief flash of light, he saw no fewer than eighteen hunters gathered around, sitting, milling or otherwise loitering. Every head turned his way in that flash of light, which cut off suddenly as Zane slapped the light out of his hand.

Mercer was beside him in the dark, and he spoke quietly. "Witches don't like the light."

"She's not a witch." Altaïr said irritably. The face of irritation he made pulled at the bandages, so he schooled his expression a little more neutral. Hadn't people outgrown this yet? Her knowledge had earned her a few places at the end of ropes and in the middle of fires.

"It's a type of manifestation of the virus, idiot." Mercer said, though his voice sounded humored. "What's that sound?"

Altaïr rolled his eyes ignoring the question in favor of the explanation. He flicked the hidden blade out and fought the urge to shank Mercer, useless as it would be. "Like the hunters then." He said with a sigh.

"Shh." Mercer hissed. Rasping growls were growing in volume. Too high to be the hunters, and definitely feminine in their timbre. "She's getting mad."

"I noticed." He said more quietly, blinking and trying to force his eyes to adjust to the dark. He could make out the moving shapes of some of the hunters in lighter colored clothing, and Aisling. Her skin was pale and she seemed to have shredded most of her clothing off. She was going to be upset about that skirt. It had originally been a pair of pants she'd claimed to be her absolute favorite. As he waited for more to materialize out of the dark, her growls abated and instead she began to whimper, and then sob again. "All the witches seem to cry like that. What's she crying about?" Altaïr wondered aloud.

Mercer made a strangled noise before a full out laugh erupted from his throat. Aisling shrieked suddenly, and startled and pained cries of hunters followed almost immediately afterward. Altaïr could barely make out the movements. Bodies moving quickly, probably being thrown. He heard the impact of bone and a few snaps, then quickly retreating footsteps.

The light flicked on in the hand of a black clad hunter. Claw marks ripped across the front of the jacket. Altaïr took the light, looking around and seeing a few hunters picking themselves up off the ground. To his left, Mercer was doubled over, hands on his knees, still laughing. "What the hell are you laughing at?" Altaïr asked, wondering the full effects of the piece of Eden on Mercer's altered physiology. It seemed to be driving him more to lunacy than to compliance.

Mercer tried to collect himself, and had some measure of success after a moment. "You. God! 'What's she crying about?' What doesn't she have to cry about?" He said, breaking into a fresh round of laughter.

Altaïr flicked off the light and walked back toward the quad, suddenly sickened at the thought of being anywhere near anything that could find such joy in her misery. Once he got Aisling out of this he was going to shank her for making him have to deal with Mercer's sadism. If she'd been right. If the virus hadn't already started working on her. If she weren't lying again, trying to get herself killed off permanently. He supposed it was better than running around as the feral beast she seemed to be reduced to at this point. After this long, could he let it end like this? Could he do anything else?

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a/n So the songs Altaïr was playing, though you probably couldn't tell because I can't embed it was Diablo Rojo by Rodrigo y Gabriela, and All Nightmare Long by Metallica. That's right. Solo on a guitar.

Further, Mercer does not like to be manipulated. Or lied to.

I don't bother with the actual written Arabic and Chinese with translation because I butcher it with Romanization, and don't have faith in the browsers holding on to the original. No I don't speak Arabic. I just use online translators.

I will not come out and say it, because sometimes a little research can be fun. You want to know how the mutated virus is spread, google it.


	5. Chapter 5

a/n Altaïr is Ubisoft's. The hunters, and other infected mentioned are Valve's. Mercer and his viral attitude is Activision/Radical's. Aisling is mine.

Again, if you haven't read Feathers, a lot of this may not make sense.

Chapter 5

By the time he caught up again, the sky was lightening already, highlighting the mountains to the east with pale blue light. That was good. He could see now. He'd stop again and try not to scare her off this time, and hope that Mercer would do the same. What was that viral freak waiting for? He already knew that he had to kill her, but didn't make a move when they'd caught up last time. What was he up to? Zane had stopped him again, so he killed the power on the quad, flipped out the solar array on the back cargo rack of the quad, and moved off through the trees. He was approaching again on foot, following Zane and trying to pick Mercer out of the crowd. The swirls of white and blue should be easy to pick out of the sea of blue. Failing that, perhaps Mercer could choose that moment to start flickering red, but Altaïr wasn't going to put much faith in a chance like that. All he saw was a sea of blue covering various colors of clothing, and gold surrounding Aisling's huddled form. She was silent, curled up against a tree and apparently asleep.

He picked his way through the hunters, who looked like they'd camped out for the morning as well. Most of them were asleep, though one in yellow was standing watch over the rest, and followed Altaïr's movements with his head as if he could see. About a meter from Aisling, something snagged his leg, and he stopped, looking down to see a hunter in dark blue holding his leg. He was sprawled on his stomach, and had lifted his head enough to be able to shake it at Altaïr. He bent down, and the hunter released him. "I'm not going to wake her up." He whispered. "Where's Mercer?" A shrug. "Go back to sleep." The hunter turned his face quickly to Aisling and back to Altaïr. He got the hint. "I'll let her sleep too." He whispered, standing and moving back to the edge of the group.

He flopped down against a tree by the hunter in yellow, who'd only given him a cursory glance and a nod. Altaïr noted the oddity that this hunter wore broad ski goggles that covered a generous amount. He wondered a moment if this hunter wore these rather than gouging out his eyes, or perhaps to hide the evidence of his self mutilation. "Varner, is it?" He asked, folding his arms and adjusting his position for more comfort. The hunter nodded, a low growl in his throat. "You got stuck on watch?" He asked, looking out over the group. It looked like a sleeping pack of wolves. He looked back up at Varner, who was shrugging with an amused smile. "Did you see where Mercer went?" Varner nodded, and pointed up into the trees. Altaïr looked that way, squinting and seeing if he could see anything, but there was nothing. Mercer must've sprinted up into the trees and taken to the air. He frowned. Where was that idiot going now?

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Altaïr jerked awake at the gentle insistence of Varner. The tall hunter was nudging his leg with his foot. He looked around, seeing that most of the hunters were already up and moving. Aisling was nowhere to be seen. When had he fallen asleep? And where had Mercer gotten off to? "Something scare her?" He asked as he stood and brushed himself off. Varner shook his head, pointing off to the west. A small cluster of hunters was walking slowly through the underbrush. He imagined Aisling was in the middle of that group. "Can you bring her back without getting yourself killed?" Varner shook his head and pointed to two hunters who where currently having a stick fight in the group that remained. They both wore red and had decent skill that might transfer to sword fighting. "They can?" Altaïr guessed. A shrug. "Did Mercer ever come back?" Varner shook his head. Altaïr cursed. It looked like Aisling was only half right about the piece of Eden. It was able to deflect Mercer's rage, but did nothing for compliance. If he'd left, Altaïr was going to have to figure out how he was going to get Aisling killed. But if she'd been wrong about the control of Mercer, was she still right about anything else she'd said? He shook his head, clearing the thought. It wouldn't do any good. If she didn't come back, then she'd be better off dead. "Hey!" He said, starting into the group of about eighteen hunters.

All heads turned to him. The two in red flipped the sticks behind their backs before discreetly dropping the evidence of their goofing off. "You know what's happened. I know I said to keep her safe, but the best thing we can do for her now is to kill her." A few grunts and growls of disapproval. "It's not like you think. She doesn't stay dead." He doubted that the concept was going to hit home on any of them. "Look. I'm not asking you to kill her unless she kills me. What I'm asking now is that you bring her back here." None of them moved immediately. He looked around at the now sulky crowd. It was obvious that none of them liked the command, but there was no slant of disobedience in their stance. "See if you can do it without scaring her." He added. "I need to talk to her if she still can." Finally some movement. A few of them started off in Aisling's direction, hardly going faster than a walk, and nudged into that motion by one in a teal sweatshirt. She wasn't moving very fast herself, and he thought that a slow approach would keep her calm. Wise tactic. He didn't give the hunters enough credit.

After a few minutes, he noticed that the crowd had turned, and was moving at the same slow pace back his way. He could see Aisling in the front, hands over her face and the occasional pitiful moan reaching his ears. At about three meters, she picked her head up and looked around, realizing she wasn't going the same direction she had been. Where she was heading, he couldn't guess, and the fact that she had an apparent destination in mind was a little surprising to him. She looked around. Looked up at the clear sky, then dropped her gaze down and saw Altaïr. Her face screwed up in frustration, and she immediately backpedaled, bumping a hunter in purple. She whirled on it, making no noise, and grabbed it by one arm, whipping it back over her head and swinging it in a wide arc around her, taking out about six hunters before they backed out of range. With a yell, she whipped the hunter in purple around again before letting go. He sailed into the crowd with a shout. One of the hunters in red ducked as his 'brother' passed overhead, and used the momentum of the crouch to spring toward her. She whirled into the attack, shrieked, froze, and he slammed into her, knocking her flat on her back. The hunter in red had his hands ready to catch any attack, but she'd gone limp, and Altaïr wondered if she'd been knocked out so easily. The hunter stepped off her and picked her up by her upper arms. She stood well enough, her head hanging. Altaïr watched her movements. They were movements of submission, but why would she submit to this hunter after the damage she'd done to the others. He'd noted that a few of the hunters were hanging back, more blood on their clothing than before, and he even caught a glimpse of one with his arm in an improvised sling, but who'd set that up? The hunter turned her and gave her a gentle nudge in Altaïr's direction. She stumbled a few steps that way before looking up at him again.

This time she tried to bolt off to the right. Two hunters, one in gray and one in black stepped into her path. She jammed her knifelike fingers into each of their stomachs, using it as leverage to shove them aside. They hit the ground and lay there to avoid her continuing wrath. Another hunter stepped into her path. The other hunter in red. She looked up at him, and Altaïr heard her begin to sob. The hunter reached out to her with distinct uncertainty in its movements. She didn't attack, and he laid a hand on her shoulder. The other hunter in red stepped up on her other side, laying a hand on her other shoulder. They turned her back to Altaïr and pushed her gently along. She only leaned against the motion and made no other moves to resist. Why was it that the two in red could handle her, while she tore the others apart? He didn't have time to mull it over. She was still hiccupping and crying when she stood before Altaïr. He frowned down at her before looking at the two hunters. They had their hoods pulled low, so he couldn't see any discerning facial features. There were only two that wore this shade of red, but he couldn't recall the names. Aisling had tried to hammer every name into Altaïr's head, but he couldn't recall these two for his life. "Aisling?" He asked quietly, not sure what sort of response he would get. She buried her fist in her mouth, trying to muffle her whining. "Aisling, are you still with us?"

She nodded jerkily before raising yellowing eyes to his face. Surprise flickered across her features. "Altaïr.." She said in a voice an octave higher than her usual. "What happened to your face?"

He gave her a half smile, knowing most of it would be lost beneath the swath of red bandages covering his face. It was all he could manage without tearing the scabbed flesh. "Nothing much."

She nodded, dropping her eyes to the patterns of blood across his shirt. "Where's Mercer? I shouldn't still be alive." She asked softly.

"He ran off." He said quietly, surprised that she still had her faculties about her after the show she put on last night and just now. It was a strange dichotomy of yearning sanity and berserk rage.

She sniffled suddenly. A spasm of her chest. "He's still here. I think. I can't see." She looked around. "I see tomorrow. Yesterday. Last year. Twenty years ahead. I don't know what's real. I… Are you talking to me now? Or will we talk tomorrow?"

"I'm here now." He said, offering her a hand.

She stared at it. "A.P. Lex is going to be mad you didn't go back. His final presentation is in two days."

"What?" He asked intelligently. She wasn't kidding about not knowing when or where she was.

Her gaze turned up to him again, and then trailed down to his hand. "Nothing. I'll ask you again in a few years." She took a step toward him, taking his hand and standing there a moment. At a loss.

"Why are you crying?"

"I saw.. I saw what he made Rai do. Where's Rai?" She mumbled.

He looked around. Rai. Which was that? The one in blue? Bright blue. He didn't see the color. "He's not here." He said, looking back down at Aisling. She was shaking her head slightly. "Is there anything I can do?" He asked, feeling small and helpless in the face of her overwhelming misery.

"Get Mercer." She took a step forward and leaned her head against his chest. "I need to die. I want my mind back."

"Can I.." He started, but stopped when he felt her long fingers on her free hand wrap around his right side.

"No." She grumbled into the fabric of his shirt.

He suddenly felt uncomfortable. He'd left in what he'd been wearing, which was only a light t-shirt and some water resistant hiking pants. He hated that style of pants. The sound the fabric made when it moved. There was no being quiet in them, but Aisling had brought three or four pairs home on her last raid, and he hadn't had a chance to 'accidentally' ruin them yet. Sound aside, the layers were light, and he could feel the edges of her claws through the shirt. There was no protection there. Perhaps a little in the belts of the harness, but it covered so little that he doubted it'd be any use. He wasn't afraid of Aisling per se, but her actions of the last few days had been a little unpredictable, and destructive to everything around her. He looked over her head to the two hunters she'd torn up. Varner and Palak were getting them vertical again, keeping an eye on Aisling. Altaïr sighed. "No good?"

"Not fast enough." She grumbled. "I'd take you out before you even got a good slice in. You saw how I took two stabs to the heart."

"What about them?" He draped his right arm around her shoulders and looked at the hunters, who'd recollected their numbers and were waiting. For what? A few were rubbing their heads again. Some that Aisling hadn't got a hold of. Others were covering their ears. He didn't hear any offensive sounds.

"No." She gave his hand a squeeze. "Not fast enough. Nice thinking though."

He frowned down at her. She usually wasn't so touchy feely. Not unless she was depressed, at which times it wouldn't be uncommon for her to approach without a word and simply sit on him. Typically, he'd put aside whatever he'd been occupying himself with and wrap his arms around her. This was her cue to start crying, and cry she did. On many occasions, but never with the body wracking sobs she'd been demonstrating in the past few days. She would simply sniffle and slowly soak the shoulder of his shirt. After a few minutes of that, she'd give him a squeeze of gratitude, stand up, and, without a word, go back to what she was doing. He would usually do the same. He imagined that right now, she was as depressed or desperate as she'd ever be. "Will you stay here and wait for him to come back?"

"I'll try." She sighed. "I'm not always here."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Sometimes I'm scared, because I know I have to go into Summer Valley." She said with a little laugh.

"Where is that?" He asked, humoring her though she made absolutely no sense. She was fading again, but he'd try to keep her talking as long as he could.

"Away. Ahead. You'll see when we get there. Under the sky so blue. You'll love it, A.P."

"A.P." He wondered aloud. Those were the initials of her birth name. Aisling Parishii, born in Scotland, raised by a French priest who cared for the orphans of the area. Typical sob story of a foundling, though she was found beneath a black flowering mimosa tree at the edge of the forest. He thought omens like that would've prevented her from living very long, but she'd never disclosed much beyond the circumstances of her discovery.

"Altaïr. Sorry. You get to be Altaïr. He'll be A.P."

"Who?"

"You."

"Okay." He shook his head, suddenly glad that she'd had such a grasp on her clairvoyance before the infection. She would've ended up in an asylum talking like this on a daily basis. "Do you want to sit?"

"Nah, Mercer's coming. He's going to be a jerkass about it, so you might want to get back." She said, moving her hand around to his stomach and giving him a little push. She grinned up at him. "Good move using Donovan and Rashad. How'd you know?"

He looked to the two hunters in red that were still flanking Aisling. "Them?"

She nodded, turning to the two and shooing them away. They took a couple steps, but stopped, and three other hunters shuffled over toward her, their steps somewhat awkward. She looked at them, her fingers folding into fists as she looked around. "Mercer!" She screeched into the trees. "Don't use them!" Donovan took a step toward her, and she ducked his grasp. One of the other hunters, one in light green, grabbed her arm while she was off balance, dragging her forward. She stumbled as another, one in yellow grabbed her other arm and tugged as well. She staggered a few meters before planting her feet and spinning her hands to grab the hunters' arms. With startled cries, they were tossed aside in high arcs. She broadened her stance before sprinting off to the west. Altaïr saw something drop out of the trees, knocking her to the ground. Quick, but efficient movements of the arms. Altaïr heard her inarticulate screams. Her attacker looked like the hunters, but then his arms changed into blades, and the illusion melted away to reveal Mercer as he continued his assault. He'd gotten about three more good blows in before his whole body was thrown aside. Aisling staggered to her feet, minus one arm, and continued to flee. A whip of flesh snapped after her, and Altaïr saw her fall. Again, Mercer descended on her, tearing at her body with gruesome proficiency. This time, rather than being tossed aside, Altaïr saw Aisling's legs catch him around the torso and drag him to the ground. Another scream, and Aisling was up and running again, minus half of her other arm this time.

Hunters scattered, fleeing the woods and passing him, fleeing or falling back for now. He wasn't sure which, but was impressed at their newfound sense of self-preservation in the face of the vicious beating going on between Mercer and Aisling. Altaïr saw Mercer leap to his feet again, and hardly a moment later, he heard Aisling scream as a tower of black spikes shot from the ground at her feet. She was tossed back, and Mercer's body exploded into a torrential eruption of barbed and chainlike appendages that blanketed the area in destruction. Trees burst into splinters. Rocks were upended from their place in the dirt. Aisling's shriek cut off abruptly, and the assault drew back into Mercer's body.

Silence. Aisling was finished, or at least knocked out. Mercer didn't seem to have been hurt in the exchange, and stood brushing himself off before moving ahead through the debris. Altaïr moved that way, sensing the worst of it was over. He was surprised at the damage she'd managed to sustain. He was more surprised that she was able to deflect Mercer enough to even try to run. It hadn't done much good though, and he figured he'd need to get her body back to the house, maybe clean it up if there were big enough pieces to do that. As he approached, he heard the low drone of Mercer's voice, and the returning venomous tone of Aisling's lighter, raspier tone. He stopped. She was still alive after that. Now he knew what she meant about neither Altaïr nor the hunters being fast enough to finish her. Mercer knelt down, wrapping claws around her torso and lifting her off the ground. She had lost all her limbs to some extent, some at the joint, some merely pulped, and her body had been punched full of ragged holes that dripped blood steadily down the ruined remains of her right leg. She screeched something else at him, and her body exploded into a cloud of blood and unidentifiable biomass. The cloud took sinewy form, connecting to Mercer's body and draining away as he absorbed it.

Altaïr's wonder ground to shock. He'd just consumed Aisling. His mind went numb with the realization. The aura around Mercer had gone solid red, swirling with gold now. Aisling had spoken like consumption wasn't death, as everyone lived on somehow within Mercer. What would become of her? Mercer turned back with arrogant triumph smeared across his face. Altaïr stared blankly while action gathered in his limbs. He heard the screams of the hunters. Their approach. "Stop!" He yelled, putting a hand out to halt them. Their movements stopped, but not the sounds of aggression. "Mercer! What did you do?" He snarled.

Mercer looked at him, the arrogance fading as a shudder ran through his frame. With a grunt, he doubled over. Something tore at him from the inside. He put a hand to his forehead, pressing hard and clamping his eyes shut against the light. The jumble of memories not quite complete. The knowledge that burned his mind, though none of it made sense. Flashes of images. Faces. Words. Languages. Swirls of light. DNA sequences that matched nothing that he'd seen. Blackness creeping in at the edges of his vision. Nausea rising from the pit of his stomach. Lightheadedness descending on his body. This was why the virus refused her last time. Why it had refused the man before. Why it was trying to isolate this assault of new biomass. They weren't human. Their bodies were abominations of nature, existing outside the natural order. They didn't stay dead. Their bodies reset to an earlier time. A safer time. What moved their mind? Their soul? Their body when nothing remained? His mind tried to fathom it, but the virus refused the self-destructive act, and expelled a bloody, semi viscous mass of flesh into the dirt. He staggered back, tripping and falling. Mercer sat there, gasping for air and drinking in the relative isolated ownership of his mind. No other person he'd consumed had threatened the apparently delicate balance of possession he held over himself.

Altaïr just stared at the bloody gel that had been Aisling's body, watching it soak into the dirt. Never had he seen her body completely destroyed, though he knew his had been on numerous occasions. He'd always awakened beneath blue skies, always during the day, and never with a cloud in the sky. Aisling was always there, and he almost never appeared anywhere near where he'd died. How his body appeared, he didn't know. He'd never seen, and Aisling had never said. He looked up at Mercer where he sat in the dirt, shaking slightly and staring ahead, seeing nothing. "Idiot." He growled, and turned away, moving back to where he'd left the quad last night. The hunters were still howling and wailing, but they followed him anyway. "Shut up!" He snarled, and they fell silent.

Mercer watched him go, taking the hunters with him. He didn't even try to control the hunters. Didn't want to feel the presence of their minds. He wanted to take this moment to remember what it was like before he'd consumed people. When his mind was his own. His memories were his own, no matter how few there were. Did these two resist being consumed? Had she simply allowed herself to be consumed this time, or was it the virus? Could she have resisted the first time he tried to consume her? He wasn't sure. The agonizing few seconds he held her mind still burned him. Her memories. The disjointed flashes. Nothing came together. Only snippets. It was like the hunter he'd consumed weeks ago, only painful. For the hunter, the virus had destroyed the memories. Hers seemed to still be intact, growing even, but encoded in her mind and DNA in a language he couldn't begin to properly read. He looked at his shaking hand, seeing the human form, the clawed form, and the whipfist simultaneously. He shook his hand, trying to dispel the image. She saw time. That's what it was. She saw time in its entirety. This wasn't always so. Before, she could control it, and that no doubt factored directly into her tinkering with Gentek. It's what the virus did to her. He could see why she wanted to desperately to die with her mind spinning out of control like that. He shook his head, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to forget. Trying to ease the pressure.

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a/n Short chapter. Lots of stuff happens.

And for the record, food poisoning is the only way to hurt Alex Mercer. I really do like his first name. In fact, his name flows well enough if you say the whole thing, but for some reason, Altaïr and Aisling don't use it. I believe Aisling will. Maybe. Eventually, when she's feeling a little better.


	6. Chapter 6

a/n Altaïr is Ubisoft's. The hunters, and other infected mentioned are Valve's. Mercer and his viral attitude is Activision/. Aisling is mine.

Again, if you haven't read Feathers, a lot of this may not make sense.

Chapter 6

Altaïr made quick work of getting back home, arriving well after dark, but still in the same day. The hunters' movements were slow, listless and absolutely irritating in their misery. He pulled the quad into the garage, plugging in and heading out the main door. He paused. Something was off. He looked up. There was a hunter in the metal rafters of the ceiling. The light blue hoodie was smeared with a healthy dose of blood. The hunter was fidgeting, shuffling, unable to stay still, and growling aloud. "Hey!" Altaïr called out to it. "Get down. What are you doing?" The hunter started at having been discovered, and looked down at him. Altaïr saw the twisted look of regret on his face, and remembered what Aisling had said. Rai had infected her. Somehow. Rai dropped heavily onto the concrete, hanging his head and screaming guilt with his posture. He stood before Altaïr as if awaiting some punishment. Perhaps waiting for an answer. "You were here the whole time?" A nod. "She's dead now. Don't feel bad." He didn't think it was possible, but the hunter's body turned even more into itself before dropping completely to sit on the floor. "I said don't worry. She'll be back in a week. Tops." A shocked face turned upward to him with enough force to shift the hood back on his head. The ravaged and torn sockets that had housed his eyes were wide open, and his jaw hung slack. "Really." He answered the question that accompanied that face, and walked out of the garage, giving Rai a good slap on the shoulder as he passed.

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The next few days were quiet. He dealt with the wounds on his face as best as he could. Luckily, Aisling's claws had been sharp, and the wounds were clean, and stitched neatly. It was going to be a lovely set of scars until he died next time, not that he was dealing with many people besides Aisling to judge his appearance. He wondered if he'd end up infected from the wounds, but remembered what Mercer had said about it being more difficult to catch now. The hunters were listless, and stayed close. He roped them into assisting the reconstruction of the roof, which was mostly native wood anyway. Their claws actually made quick work of stripping and cleaning rough wood into some useful support beams. The wooden shingles were a different story, and it took a few demonstrations before they figured out just what he was doing. Once that was figured out, a rough-cut pile of shingles grew faster than he could put nail them onto the roof. The front door was a similar story, and by the end of the second day, the house was repaired. After that, he turned his attention to the quad. It needed cleaning and a once over. It hadn't been serviced in a while before Aisling's infection, and the rough trip had loosened a few things. While he was at it, he checked the other quad and the snowmobiles too. He managed to filth up an outfit on that endeavor before moving into the house to sand the blood off the wood floors. That actually took a bit. Her blood had seeped a decent distance into the wood. Again, he conned a few hunters into helping, though the trick was getting them to stop, or not gouge the wood. They apparently appreciated the distraction, and some part of his mind was annoyed at how he was viewing them as people now, though that part of his mind was hard to pin down and often silent.

For him, the repairs were decent enough distraction, but with the help of the hunters, most of the manual labor was quickly finished. After that, he noticed that the hunters stayed outside unless he called them in specifically. He wondered at this, unable to find a reason why they'd prefer the outside. The weather had taken a turn for the chilly, and the days were in the low twenties, and the nights were in the lower teens. They didn't seem phased by it, and seemed to be distracting themselves with more than just sitting around. He was glad to see that he didn't need to entertain them, and turned his attention to Aisling's mail. There were reports and returns on the information he'd sent from the Eden interface, requests for funding, requests for relocation, and plenty of information regarding the movements of some satellites. A good bit of it, he was out of the loop for, but he was able to deal with what he knew, sending out orders and directives.

Having dealt with what he could, he looked into Aisling's schedule. These days were blank, as strange as that was. It was reassurance that she'd planned for this. That she would be coming back, because days next month were filled with appointments and reminders. Dealing with her computer, he realized how damaged her diving rig was. Apparently she'd been using it when Mercer had arrived. He frowned, and repaired that as well, ignoring the hunters that tapped on the windows and offered to help. The electronics were a little too delicate for him to be delegating to overeager children, even if they demonstrated better manual dexterity than children. He hoped the damage was isolated to the diving rig and hadn't spread to the computer downstairs, or the wiring connecting the whole mess. He could manage repairs, but wiring was annoying, and the coding was a little beyond him. Both of the tablets were connecting fine and accessing the information in the basement, but he contacted one of their tech guys and had them run a remote diagnostic on it anyway. Everything came back clear from that, so he marked the computer off as repaired.

It had been twelve days now, and no sign of Aisling. He was remaining upbeat, reassuring the hunters, and himself, of her return, but even that optimism was fading. Where was she? He distracted himself from the worry by dealing with their neglected garden, which supplied most of their vegetables for the warmer months, leaving the dried supplies and lots of squash to last the winter. Most of the plants had died back in the cold snap, but a few were hanging on, and a couple were thriving in the chill. That done, he realized he'd officially exhausted his to do list. The ongoing management of communications and information held his attention for quite a few hours of the day. Keeping abreast of communications was easy, mainly because most of what was coming in at this point needed Aisling's clairvoyance to actually be able to answer, though Joy was requesting some financial manipulation for a spring break trip, and that was just a juggle of money, which was mercifully easier to engineer. The information was harder to come by without Aisling to divine the future. With the free time of passing the buck to his absent source of extra sensory intelligence, Altaïr poked around in the various pieces of Eden, trying to pick out useful information. He found a few fragments of DNA that might be useful memories of God knows who, encryption software utilizing sound, and some mechanical process for tapping into subatomic particles for data storage. Wrapping his head around these took him hours, and getting them recorded into something useful took even longer. All were received well from the respective research teams. That done, he slept for the first time in three days.

Feeling somewhat accomplished, he allowed himself a light day of correspondence and morale boosting, so after dealing with the communications, he grabbed his guitar and headed outside. He let his mind wander, trying to figure out where Aisling might be, while he strummed Pachelbel's Cannon. Any music he played seemed to engross the hunters for as long as he played. He was going to be glad when Aisling got back to entertain these childlike deathbeasts. Not that he was strapped for time lately, and playing gave him time to sit still and ruminate. He took a moment to think, and try to figure a pattern to his resurrections after the more gruesome deaths. Those that destroyed his body. He'd always awakened near Aisling, and never in the times he was with her did she die and leave no remains. She'd told him of a few occasions that it had happened, but never enough detail for him to figure out a pattern to her reappearance. He frowned, realizing he'd changed songs to an older soundtrack. What was the song? Fool's Paradise? The Ecstasy of Gold? He didn't know, but it was well received whether he knew the name or not. Focusing on the music and finding a quiet center, he schooled his mind blank, and played.

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Altaïr realized that he was getting impatient. No, not impatient. That's what he convinced himself so he wouldn't worry. He wasn't missing the questioning glances of the hunters. They were getting worried, no, impatient, too. He was over browning pancakes on the fourteenth day when he heard the hydraulics of the basement door, a clattering, and the door thumping closed again. He opened the door to his room where the basement access was, expecting to find Aisling looking a little ruffled. Instead, he was met with the anxious glance of Rai, who made a low growl and a wide gesture that encompassed the rest of the house. "I don't know." Altaïr said, shaking his head and assuming that this particular hunter was inquiring after her. "She should've been back by now. I don't think she's going to show up here." Rai's frown quirked into a frustrated snarl. "What are you doing in the basement?" Rai just stared at him, not wanting, or unable, to answer. After a moment, he sniffed, and looked toward the kitchen. Altaïr turned, remembering the pancakes and rescued them from the heat, but it was too late. They were too burnt. Rai walked slowly out of the bedroom, and Altaïr tossed a crispy pancake at him. He caught it, sniffed it, and ate it. Altaïr snapped the heat off, his appetite gone, and grabbed a few more layers and a coat. It had stayed below ten degrees for the past couple days. If Aisling was out there, she didn't need the insult to injury of freezing to death on the way home. He was sure she had to be alive again, but the question of where remained. Rai snagged the other three pancakes out of the pan, tossing them from hand to hand in an attempt to let them cool. He followed Altaïr outside.

Altaïr had passed two hunters who were simply sitting against the house, oblivious to the cold, and followed the trail through the mimosas and around toward the garage. By the time he got there, he had a following at least twenty strong. He started the quad and opened the door. The search party had gathered itself, and likely didn't need any rallying. "Spread out. We need a wide search. She could've wandered anywhere!" The guttural cry that answered him was proof of understanding, and the hunters scattered as he cranked the throttle on the quad, heading back to where he'd last seen her.

The cries were all around him in the woods, and had he not been assured that they were from his allies, the sound would've shaken his confidence, because he couldn't even catch a glimpse of them. That was the sound to accompany him for the better part of the day, though occasionally, a hunter would dart across his path. They were blanketing the area quite effectively.

He didn't notice a change in the quality of the hunters' screams, but he noticed a sharp increase in the amount of hunters crossing the trail in front of him. They were all going the same direction. Gathering. He turned east, following them and assuming that they likely knew something he didn't. Through the trees, he could see the wreckage of where Mercer had finally decided to finish Aisling. The surroundings weren't familiar. He figured he must have been approaching from a different angle. No surprise there. It was beyond where his hikes or runs took him and without the compass on the quad, he probably would've been turned around three times in this part of the woods. Breaking into the clearing of debris, he saw the hunters engaged in an earthmoving exercise.

The quad slid to a stop on the loose earth, and he hopped off, pausing to glance around and assure himself that Mercer wasn't still lingering. It had been so long, why would he have waited around? Especially since Aisling had proven to be much less appetizing for consumption, though it looked like a rousing bout of brain freeze by Altaïr's reckoning. Perhaps he'd have to give her a hard time about that once he got her back on her feet again. Looking around, he decided with a good measure of certainty that Mercer wouldn't be showing his face. He was long gone, and had even seen fit to put what might've been Aisling's remains under another meter of dirt. Altaïr had to admit that if Aisling had managed to scare Mercer off, that he was beyond impressed. He debated a moment on joining in on the dig, but decided he didn't feel like getting in there with what was probably at least fifty eight hands totaling two hundred and ninety claws, when only four claws had sufficiently disfigured his face hardly two weeks ago. The hunters were already halfway through the mound of dirt anyway, so he gave them another moment before he'd step in and try to do some verbal ordering. He noticed that one in darker red was pausing in his digging to actually smell the dirt. Which was that? Maddox? Likely. He'd noticed that hunter sniffing the air more often than looking around. Altaïr figured they had to have something to make up for their lack of sight. Strange enough, he'd seen a few of them with fresh blood on their faces from apparent self-inflicted wounds. Their wounds from dealing with Aisling had already healed, except for Helden's broken arm. Something must've thrown him off. Altaïr noticed that Helden had been a little unsteady, and tripped often since then, usually further damaging his wounded arm. He'd not been able to pin him down and see what had been knocked loose besides the bones in his shoulder. He thought about pulling Helden aside right about now, since he was already one hand down in the digging effort, but Maddox let loose a yell to stop the whole lot of them in their actions. At this point, Altaïr decided it was time to step in. They'd apparently found her.

"Alright! Alright!" He called loudly, walking into the fray as they all turned to face him. "You guys did the dirty work. Stop before you tear her up." He started up the small bank they'd built and looked into the small crater in the center, still having to push two hunters out of his way as he walked. In the bottom of the small well, he saw the comparatively pale flesh of some expanse of a body part. Maddox was still leaning over her, sniffing, and turned a questioning frown up to Altaïr. "Yeah." He grunted, kneeling down and gently clearing the loose dirt away from her. It was the back of her neck, he figured as he found a mess of matted red hair. He was able to unearth most of her upper body pretty quickly in the loose dirt. "She's dead again. I told you she'd come back. Look, she even lost this arm when she was fighting Mercer." He said, pointing to her limbs as they came to light again. She was facedown, and he used a handful of hair to lift her face out of the dirt. The muscles were slack, but aside from being dead, she looked more normal. Her mouth was open, and full of dirt. "Ugh." He groaned. He hated suffocation most, and drowning. Those were horrible ways to die, and he was going to bet that she'd probably done it a few times in the past week too. He kicked himself for not going out hunting her sooner. The hunters were crowding in at this point, their growls and grumbling quickly getting annoying, though he knew the sounds were nothing more than questions about Aisling's well being. "It's fine!" He yelled, pausing in his digging to shoo them away. "Give me a little room!" They grudgingly obeyed, and he was able to extract her from the loose dirt. She was cold and limp. She'd been dead a while. He got her out of the dirt, shedding his jacket to wrap her up, as her clothes understandably hadn't survived the fight with Mercer. Shrugging off the attention and worry of the hunters as they tried to prod at her, Altaïr got her back to the quad, sitting her somewhat upright in front of him and holding her there as he headed back toward the house.

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They'd been going about two hours when she jerked against his chest. He heard her coughing begin, and the flurry of feathers she choked up swirled around him, bringing curious hunters in closer as he stopped the quad. She curled into the coughing fit, bending until her face was on the handlebars. He rubbed her back; both to soothe what he was sure were going to be sore muscles and to let her know that she wasn't alone. She jerked at the contact, apparently surprised that she wasn't alone this time, and tried to bite off her cough to turn and look at him. He leaned over toward her periphery, and saw her smile just before breaking off into coughing again. This was a rough resurrection for her, probably worse than any he'd seen.

It took her a good ten minutes to hack up whatever feathers and dirt were in her lungs, and he regretted not having any water or even a useful first aid kit for her. He had figured she'd be dead when he found her, and that he'd get her home before she woke again. When the coughing subsided, she leaned over the motor and handlebars of the quad, rasping unsteady breaths, her head turned to the side and staring at the hunters that tried to enter her field of vision. She smiled weakly at them, holding a hand out to those that got close enough to touch.

When her breathing had slowed and quieted somewhat, Altaïr finally spoke. "Sorry."

"For what?" She didn't lift her head, but let her hand drop against the side of the quad.

"For leaving you."

He saw her smile. "Doesn't matter. You came and got me."

"How many times did you suffocate?"

"Ugh." She grunted, and wiped at the dirt on her face. "Where's Mercer?"

"Gone. I think." He said, looking over at Palak for confirmation. A nod. "Yeah. You scared him off. What did you do?"

"Do?" She asked, her eyes widening with surprise. "Nothing. He ate me. That's all I remember beyond waking up in the dirt."

"I think you gave him indigestion. He puked you back up." Altaïr said, slipping off the quad. She sat somewhat upright, pulling the coat closed and looking at him. He slid her back on the seat and sat in front of her, switching the electronics on again and starting off toward home.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned her head against his back. He felt her laugh. "Don't remember that. How are the boys?"

"They're alright."

She looked at whoever moved across her vision, opting not to move much. Her back hurt, and she was tired already. "They're filthy."

"I'm not bathing them." He grunted, reassured that she was already worrying about others.

"Good to see you're taking care of yourself. What happened to your face?"

"You tore into it before you left." He grumbled.

"Sorry."

"For what?" He echoed her question from earlier.

"Hack and slash on your face. I don't remember doing it."

"Doesn't matter. You came back." He said with a little smile.

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They'd gone another hour before he felt her grip go slack, and her hands fell from his stomach to his thighs. She'd either died or fallen asleep. He caught her wrists and held on. He didn't need her falling off the quad on top of everything else today.

She roused when he stopped again, confirming the suspicions of sleep, and looked up at him with bleary eyes as he started to lift her off the quad. She waved him off and swung her legs around to the ground. "Didn't get enough sleep in the past few weeks?" He asked with a smirk.

She laughed, and then coughed. "Still have a lot of crap in my lungs. Hard to breathe." She stood, and wobbled toward the front door. He let her go, and pulled the quad back around to the garage, noting with little surprise that he didn't have an entourage this time.

When he walked back to the house, he noticed that every hunter was gathered around toward the front. He expected to see Aisling there giving a speech, but no. The door was closed, and he had to wade through the crowd to get inside. "Double or nothing she's in the shower. Leave her alone for a little while. She'll get some tea and be all over you guys." A few dry rasps of laughter followed him as he went inside. He noted the muddy footprints leading to her room and his own jacket, filthy and discarded over one of the chairs. She was in the shower. Big surprise. She'd probably be hungry once she achieved some semblance of cleanliness, so he went to see what sort of leftovers he could clean out of the fridge. She was a bigger fan of leftovers than he was, and he'd certainly stockpiled in the past week.

He was, of course, right in the assumption. She'd breezed into the kitchen in fuzzy woolen clothes, eaten four plates of whatever he bothered to put in front of her, some of which he'd forgotten what it was, or when he'd made it. He'd offered her tea, which she snatched, curled around the cup and hissed at him whenever he came within a meter and a half of her position. "Feeling better?" He asked with a chuckle.

"More human. Less infected." She took a long drink of the tea. "Warmer. Still a lot of crap in my lungs. Probably going to end up with pneumonia."

"What was the infection like?" He asked, not really fazed by her impending illness. She was overdue for getting some sickness. He was hogging the lion's share of the plague.

"Remember that bet with the acid?" She blew on the tea and adjusted her grip on the mug.

"Top 'til the first one drops?" He asked, remembering the terms of that particular bet, which she'd lost only by the grace of a lower body weight.

She nodded. "Something like that, only less with pink elephants and candy kids and more with everything we've dealt with in the past and everything that's coming down the pike in the future."

He nodded, remembering that train wreck of perception, both for their combined experience in the past, and her solo flight into the future. "You called me A.P. half the time we talked."

"Yeah. That's the thing Lex is working on." She said. "Have it finished in about three years." She stared down into the nearly empty cup, a frown creasing her brow.

"The hunters are freaking out over you." He grumbled, changing the subject. She looked more than a little hesitant to look for the right date or timeline for when this A.P. would show up. He figured she'd probably spent enough time out of the present in her mind in the past few weeks. Time for massive distraction again. "I told them you'd be out after you got some tea."

She smiled up at him. "Yeah?" She stood and refilled her cup with hot water. "That's nice of you." Her smile was becoming shrewd. She'd realized that he'd gotten over his aversion to the germ-riddled boys, and he wasn't about to admit to it.

"Yeah. Whatever. They're the ones that found you. Maddox, I'll bet. He's got a bloodhound's nose." He waved it off and opened the fridge to find some food for himself, ignoring her and hoping she'd get the hint. He heard a low laugh, and the front door close.

After the initial cheer, such as it was, all was silent outside. Altaïr thought nothing of it until it stretched on for more than an hour. He poked his head out the front, not particularly surprised to find only mimosa trees. He headed around to the garage, somewhat surprised to find it empty. He headed back toward the house, noticing with irritation that he'd missed the glaring evidence of their exit. Fresh destruction of the dirt lead southward, but there was no evidence of Aisling's passing. Her tracks could've been covered up, which was only acceptable because there was no evidence of struggle closer to the house, and no blood in the tracks. He slammed the door as he strode inside. Where had that fool girl gone this time? And without any means of communication either. He snatched open the cabinet to dig out one of the pieces of Eden and stopped, staring. The cabinet was empty. Not even the basket remained. He opened the next door. Books. The next. Blankets. He slammed it again and threw open Aisling's door. He wouldn't be worried unless the one was gone out of her diving rig. Snapping open the Eden interface, be was relieved to see the gold light shimmer in response to his curiosity. As he laid a hand on it, the light dimmed out, but the relic continued to work, and Altaïr's awareness spread. His vision slipped free of his head, and he saw himself stretched around the supports to reach the small compartment in the base of the rig. His awareness spread, and he saw the house through the break in the trees. A thin wisp of smoke curled through the branches. A faint aura of blue lingered in the mimosa grove. The blue trailed south, and he followed it, quickly crossing a few miles before he caught up to the pack. The hunters were headed south at full steam, and Aisling was in the fray, pointing and yelling orders. Her words were lost to the din. This particular piece of Eden was good for looking around, but it lost most of the sound over the distance. Whatever she was doing, she was doing by her own free will, so he was content to let her do it. She was probably going toward Winter Park, by his guess, though he couldn't begin to guess what she could possibly need.

She was gone a few days, and he kept checking in on her using the piece of Eden. The one he still had anyway. She'd found someone in Winter Park, and was now heading east with them, apparently escorting them to Denver. What few snippets of the news mentioned the area had said that the city had been cleaned out and fortified. Not that there was much left to fortify against. The second plague was putting a dent in the army infected with the green flu. Still, there were those immune to the plague and not the flu, those that fell to the plague after somehow surviving the flu and it's effects, and those really unlucky individuals that contracted both. Lucky for those still with their wits, the third group was larger than the others. From what he'd seen, none of their hunters were falling victim to the plague. In such a large sample, he thought the statistics weighed heavily in favor of Mercer's tinkering, which was expected considering the source of the flu, and Mercer's likely proximity to the plague. Altaïr wondered a moment if Mercer might also be to blame for that epidemic as well. Chances seemed slim, but for all the diseases originating in Gentek, nothing was out of the question. He shook off the musings, seeing little use in trying to cipher it out. More importantly now was finding those pieces of Eden. That anyone would know where to find them was a smaller chance than he liked to entertain. More likely was that one of the hunters had done something, but what? They were smarter than he gave them credit for. He knew that, but he still doubted they could use those cerebral relics. He'd rifled through the living room in futility before deciding to use the relic in the computer to aid in the search.

It opened up the area quickly, and he was surprised at their proximity. They hadn't even left the house. In fact, their glow shimmered through the reinforced floorboards of his room. He detached from the relic, crawling backward from beneath the diving rig and moved across the narrow hall to his room. The hydraulics hissed as the door opened. He scratched his head, looking down the stairs and trying to figure out why their entire collection of ancient wizardry was strewn down an entire flight of stairs. The basket was on its side on the small landing. He sighed, remembering Rai playing with the door to the basement. As he collected the pieces, he tried to figure out the why, and only came up with a question mark.

Something sounded upstairs. He tossed the last few pieces in the basket and climbed the stairs. The door hissed closed behind him as he moved to the kitchen. The noise was the tablet voip ringing, and the kitchen was where he'd last used his tablet. He dropped the basket on the counter and scooped up the handheld, swatting the screen to answer. "Hello?"

"Hey, hey. It's me." The French turn on the words gave Aisling away.

"You made it to Denver, then?"

"Uh." Confusion was evident in that pause, and he had to try not to laugh. It wasn't often he caught her off guard. "What did you do?"

"Used the one in your diving rig. The others got tossed in the basement."

"In.. the basement?"

"Yeah." He said with a small measure of humor still lingering in his voice. "Thought you might know."

"I don't know."

"Still got everybody?"

"Yeah. Had to bring a family down inside the Denver perimeter. Military set it up pretty quick. Glad we got in and out when we did."

"A family?" He wondered if this tied in to anything.

"Yeah. Out of gas outside of Winter Park. Couldn't figure out how to get gas with no electricity. Put a few slugs in the hunters."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. They heal fast."

"What about you?"

"Oh, they missed me. Thought they were going to save me."

He couldn't help but laugh. "From a mob of hunters? What were they packing?"

"Couple shotguns. Fired off probably ten, fifteen rounds before I got them to stop."

"Great."

"Yeah. I'm in Denver now. Probably going to buy some clothes and stuff for mending." A pause as a faint squabble started in the background. When she spoke again, it was obvious that she'd pulled the phone away. "Some duct tape."

"You've already got duct tape here." He said, remembering her last supply outing. There were at least fifteen rolls stacked in the living room cabinets.

"I know. I couldn't figure out why I got so much, but I see now."

"Why?" He was curious as to the need also.

"The hunters. They shred their sleeves with how they run." A pause and a laugh. "Except Hunter. He ripped his sleeves clean off at the shoulders."

"Hunter? That's a creative name." Altaïr couldn't help but gibe.

"Don't blame me. He's got it tattooed up his arm. Call it an educated guess." She laughed.

"So when are you coming back?"

"Oh, I'll start out after I get the stuff. It'll probably take me a couple hours to get outside the perimeter. I had to hide the hunters outside. They've got patrols going around, and I don't think I'll be able to convince the military to leave 'em be. I told the boys to get lost and I'd meet up with them later."

"How?"

"Dunno. Told them to keep moving, and be on the lookout for me. I'll just head west on 70 until I pick them up again."

"Think you'll run into any others besides ours?" He asked, ever the logical one. If she were blindsided by a regular hunter, a mob of infected people, or God forbid, a witch, she wouldn't last long, and it'd be hell to find her out in the middle of nowhere. Beyond that, there was no telling how her hunters would react to it. He didn't like the plan, but figured she'd thought it out, as usual.

"The area's been cleared. I think the biggest problem is going to be getting the military to let me leave. I'll get some firepower before I go though."

"Safety and peace." He grumbled, knowing full well that she'd be fine, but still a little irked that she'd put herself out in the first place. She could've sent for him to come help, unless he was supposed to be guarding the area here. It was any guess, and she hadn't been forthcoming with any explanations, so he left it up in the air for guessing.

"And you." She answered lightly. "Always." The connection ended, and he tossed the handheld aside.

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a/n Yeah, I'm totally using Celsius. Low twenties = low seventies. Low teens = fifties. That's actually pretty warm for November.

He was playing Fool's Paradise. Off the Trigun soundtrack by Tsueno Imahori. The Ecstasy of Gold is good too. It's done by Ennio Morricone for the soundtrack of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. (The good? Altaïr still plays guitar. The bad? He's one finger short on the fret board. The ugly? He's probably better than you.)


	7. Chapter 7

a/n Again, if you haven't read Feathers, a lot of this may not make sense.

Chapter 7

It took her four days to finally arrive, though a winter storm hit first, dumping thirty three centimeters of snow near the house. He imagined the valley to the south was probably worse off. When she finally returned, she and the hunters were filthy and visibly tired. None of them showed any ill effects of the cold, though the hunters' coloring was never anything to inspire one to think of warmth. Everyone had a smattering of blood covering their clothes, and at least ten of them were carrying packs full of who knew what. Altaïr didn't press as Aisling seemed to only want to bathe, and the hunters didn't seem very forthcoming with information. He looked them over. They looked road weary, but still alert. They all had blood spatters on their arms and chests, the source of which Altaïr couldn't begin to guess. Aisling had been right. Their sleeves and pants legs were two clicks above tatters. They could still be fixed at this point, which Altaïr was betting would happen. Tape encircled the loose ends, holding them fast and providing a reasonable stopgap. They were milling, unsure of the next destination. "Go on. Get in the garage where it's warm." He called to the hunters, waving his arms as if shooing birds. If Aisling had wanted them in the house, she would've brought them in, no matter how crowded it would've gotten. They obeyed, but not with a great measure of eagerness. They dropped whatever burden they were carrying before walking off through the trees. He tossed the packs inside, noting their good condition. She must have raided an REI for this, or shopped, he added as a receipt worked its way out of the first bag. He checked the list and found some backpacking supplies beyond the bags. Didn't take people long to get set up once the threat was over.

Again she greeted him, though considerably more friendly now that she was clean and huddled against the glass of the fire pit. "Thanks for waiting up on me. How are you feeling?"

"Fine. I should ask the same of you." He said, folding his arms and leaning against the doorframe. She was looking better. Less drawn. More ready to smile, and she did at his concern.

She coughed heartily, though didn't produce any feathers with the rattling noise. "Cold. Did you know infected people lose thirty degrees of core body temperature?" She rubbed her upper arms to warm herself from the thought. "At least. It'll have to get colder before we can see the bottom end."

"They didn't seem phased by the cold here. They weren't getting frostbite on the way back?"

She shook her head. "It didn't bother them if they did." She dropped her eyes to the floor and tapped her lower lip thoughtfully. She mumbled under her breath, and he was unable to pick up the words.

"What did they get into?" He pressed her from her futile musing. If she wanted to know the hows and whys of the hunters, she was going to have to get someone with actual scientific training to tell her about it. Preferably someone besides Mercer. She looked at him blankly, and stood up off the high hearth. "All the blood." He said, moving his hand across his chest to illustrate the location.

"Oh that." She made a face. "They decided they were hungry and chased down an elk. Dragged it back and everything." She shrugged at some nonverbal admission. "Guess they thought I might be hungry too."

"Disturbingly thoughtful." He grunted.

"It was actually pretty good." She said with a laugh that broke off into a grimace. She rubbed her chest. "What I got, anyway. They ate most of it." She rubbed her stomach. "If they eat like that, I can see why they don't do it very often. She made another face. That was something like a ten-pound meal! And it didn't slow them down at all!"

Ignoring her melodrama, he wondered at the premise. "They don't eat often?" He hadn't noticed this. Hadn't paid attention, because, honestly, he still didn't take into consideration that their limited mentality necessitated them needing to be fed. He'd figured they took care of it on their own, which they apparently did, though less frequently than he or Aisling had figured. At least it would make cheaper upkeep.

She shook her head. "Not for how fast they heal. They already healed from getting shot. Their eyes look like they're trying to heal too."

"Trying?" He pushed off the door and moved toward the kitchen.

"Trying." She repeated, following him into the kitchen and fishing around in the tea cabinet. "They keep digging at them. It's like seeing hurts or something."

"Makes sense I guess. They get around well enough without sight." He said with a shrug before opening the fridge to decide on some food for himself.

"Yeah, but why rip them out if they're just going to heal?" She mused, pulling hot water from the boil tap. She took a deep breath and coughed again, producing nothing.

He pulled a liter of marinara from the fridge and stood up. "I blame Mercer."

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She spent the next four days strapped into her computer, trying desperately to catch up. Her coughing continued with greater frequency than was normal, but Altaïr let her go, and ran interference on correspondence, handling what he could and pulling out commands and instructions from the logs she'd set aside to deal with once she'd caught up on the future and all its branches of effects. He'd long since deciphered the logic if her esoteric notes, so he wasn't worried about the orders and plans he derived from them, and sent them out. Most of the rest of the Brotherhood had never quit commenting on the long bouts of silence followed by bursts of communication, so he wasn't surprised when the snide comments of confirmation came in. After a few hours of sorting through this, he stopped as he came to a single line spaced out from the rest, stating a simple reminder. 'Thank Altay-tay for busting his ass.' He laughed aloud at the reminder, feeling pretty sure that she wasn't going to see the reminder herself, but knew that he would get the hint. He stifled the laugh as his stomach turned, thoroughly unhappy at his movements. Pushing it aside, he went on through the logs.

An email came in with a large file. It explained itself simply. 'Animus AP Projection patch. Place in parent folder. Run diagnostic.' He checked the file. Seemed to be exactly what the email said. He sent a ping to Aisling's rig to let her know to wrap it up so he could talk to her.

Ten minutes later, as he sat on her bed, he saw her spasms finally slow, and she slitted her eyes open against the low light in the room. "What is it?" She asked shakily. He stood to help her unhook from the machine. Her mind was physically exhausted, though her cognition was intact, her motor skills were failing her, and doing so quickly. She stepped down out of the rig, her legs threatening to give out beneath her. He moved her around to sit in his recently vacated spot.

"Need some tea or something?" He asked, holding her steady by the shoulders.

She smiled lopsidedly and winced at the movement of her body. "Maybe a glass of water." He nodded, and she leaned back against her hands as he went to fetch it. He hated to see her like this. It was like trying to use a dull knife. Best weapon one could ask for, but not at its sharpest. He turned on the water, filling a glass and rubbing his head as if it would soothe the growing ache there. He brought her some water and offered it to her. She took it somewhat unsteadily, so he held on with one hand to hold it stable while she drank. She released it, letting him hold it for her. "What's going on?"

"Isabelle de Medea sent that patch for the animus program. We need to install it and run a diagnostic. The computer is already running hot, so I didn't want you connected to it in case something went bad." He said.

"Huh. The patch?"

"AP Projection?" He said by way of suggestion.

"Pro.." Her mouth hung open as she remembered the project. Use the framework of the animus to project the world, the events and their logical conclusions without taxing her abilities. She could merely shape and pull at the timelines and let the machine roll out the rest. It was based off a study that de Medea had insisted Aisling participate in that found out really nothing about her abilities, or their origins, but one of the pieces of Eden had figured out how to code it into something functional. The system still used the program for the animus as a crutch, and though it had been explained how the project would work, the explanation was only hypothetical, because any of the test subjects de Medea had put in the system had only been able to access their past and ancestors per the Animus program. The patch only let them act completely contrary to their ancestors' inclinations without desynchronization. Hypothetically, since Aisling could already conjure the future, the Animus would work with the information provided and expand the projection. Hypothetically. But realistically, here it was. Ready to install. Already. Aisling couldn't believe the fortune, especially with the diving ports coming so soon. "For me?" She beamed. "Let's get it in there!" She said, standing up and staggering toward the diving rig.

"Stop." He said, catching her arm with his free hand and spinning her back to face him. It was an easy feat to simply turn her unwieldy balance around. "It needs to run a diagnostic. It'll take a while."

"Since when do you do the computers?" She asked through narrowed, suspicious eyes.

"Since you died after Mercer smashed you out of your computer." He said coldly.

"Oh." Her smile lessened, and her glance seemed to take in his entire appearance. Subdued, somewhat droopy in the limbs, lethargic, paler than usual. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Find something else to do." He said, ignoring her question and pushing her back around to sit and squatting down to eye level in front of her. "Eat. Sleep. Go play catch with the hunters. I don't care. Take a break. You sound terrible." He pushed the water into her still shaking hands.

She took it, though he still steadied the glass as she drank. "Okay. I guess I do need to get the hunters fixed up and clean. How are they?"

He shrugged. "In the garage last I saw. That's where I told them to go."

"Huh." She grunted, pushing the empty glass back toward him. He took it and stood up fully in front of her. She reached up and caught his arm, pulling herself up to stand and grimacing at the motion. "I'll get the sewing machine and go on out there. How's the heat in the garage?"

He rolled his eyes, not missing her motions. She was hurting. Judging by how much she'd been coughing, he wasn't surprised, but she wasn't stopping for it, so he let her ride out her pneumonia until she dropped. "Put on a few more layers." He said. She failed miserably at taking a real break, but he'd settle for a mental break, especially with her getting ill. The fever might affect her abilities. He even doubted her ability to stagger out to the garage without some difficulty. It was chillier lately, and he figured pneumonia might be a better way to go than freezing.

Thankfully, her desire for mobility and need for small, multiuse household goods had somehow gotten her a handheld sewing machine, so he didn't have to haul anything big out through the snow. They'd collected about sixty-five centimeters of the white stuff now, and he wasn't particularly a fan. Give him sand any day. The snow was just too wet, and cold. It reminded him of an old mission gone awry well before he'd ever met Aisling. He nearly dragged her down the unseen path to the garage. There were plenty of tracks in the fresh snow, handprints, footprints, and body prints. The hunters were out and about whether he'd seen them or not. He half dragged her though the snow, her long red sweater tangling around her legs with her awkward attempts to move through the powder. She'd just laughed as she staggered along, jabbering about missing the snow, though it had only been eight months since their last snow. He knew she came from the north originally, and spent a good bit more time than him in the Himalayas, and Alps, and other mountains he didn't feel like conjuring the names.

When they'd finally found the tunneled out entrance to the garage, he had a bit of gratitude in the back of his mind for the hunters not having stayed inside. The stairs were slick with packed snow, and Aisling tried to fall down them a couple times. Once inside, she dropped her bag of fabric and other sewing supplies and sat down heavily next to it. There were only four hunters inside, and they were actually sprawled over the counters, apparently asleep. "Well, that works too." She said with a small laugh. "Guess they sleep like they eat."

Altaïr looked down at her. She was looking back at the hunters, smiling and shaking her head. Either she was coming unglued, or some grand plan was coming together. He was inclined to blame it on the fever she was starting. She was still shaking. Not surprising for how long she'd been in the computer. He could only guess at what she'd seen in there. The logs were only a small piece. Only the things that could be changed at this point in time. Some of the commands were only changing things that would be further manipulated later. No real effect until then. She was only setting up dominoes. "What are you doing?" He finally asked.

She turned around to look at him, obviously confused by the question. "Sitting for now. I guess I'll wait for them to wake up. Nothing worse than waking up naked." She laughed, and coughed.

"Not that." He bent down to her eye level, indicating the garage around them with a sweep of his arm. It stopped to point at the sleeping hunters, who were beginning to stir. "This. You." He pointed at her. "You can barely stand. You're getting sick. You're pushing yourself. Why? To what end?"

"I'm behind." She said softly, pulling the bag onto her lap and pointedly digging around in the contents, avoiding eye contact. "I missed a few things. It's going to be hell to catch up."

He looked over at the hunters. One had found his feet. Hayato, maybe. The shape of the face was oriental, and the hoodie was gray. Altaïr found it ironic that Aisling had tried to name them based on their apparent nationality. A little insulting, perhaps racist, or maybe she somehow found out their names? The DNA was destroyed. Fingerprints? Altaïr couldn't guess. Hayato was crossing the room to crouch beside Aisling, nudging her with one elbow. She smiled and returned the gesture. Altaïr brought her attention back around when he spoke again. "You fell behind by your own decisions."

Her smile faded, and she pushed the bag aside. "I had to act."

"Act on what?" He asked. She nudged the hunter by way of answer. He furrowed his brow. The hunters. Of course. "What are they for?"

"For?" She asked, confused further by his pointed approach.

"I'm your go-to guy. Your personal blade so you don't dirty your hands. Lucy is your inside girl and coder for the animus. Isabelle codes your crystal ball. Benjamin is your face for the media. Imam is on R&D for whatever the pieces of Eden spit out. Garret is your guardian of the builder. Shaun is your historian. What are they for?" He pointed to the hunter again, who simply looked at him with a slight tilt to his head.

She looked sidelong at Hayato, thoughtful. "What do you think?"

The hunter turned to her and shrugged. Altaïr settled his weight back on his heels and folded his arms. "I think you're dabbling in the germ warfare, and you're going to get burned again."

She pouted, turning to look at Altaïr. "These guys are the burn. They're not supposed to be like this."

"What do you mean?"

"I missed a few things." She said again. "The green flu wasn't supposed to get out."

"You said Mercer caused it. Sent me to get Dana out of the way of the backlash."

"He did. He might've." She corrected herself. "I couldn't tell. He's too unpredictable." She said with a shallow sigh. "It's not all bad though. Every cloud has a silver lining."

"Don't tell me you've salvaged even this." He groaned.

She flipped a shaky arm around the unsuspecting hunter's shoulders and pulled him over. He floundered over sideways, falling into her lap, where she wrapped both arms around his head while he tried desperately to get vertical again. She grinned over the hood at Altaïr. "I've already seen what they can do. What they will do."

He sighed, realizing that grin was her mask sliding back into place. This was a plan coming together, even if it started out as an epic mistake, and he wasn't going to be informed on the details. He hated when she held her cards to her chest like this, and decided to pry and see if she'd share. "And what will they do?"

"They'll fight. They'll travel. They'll learn. They'll help us deal with those that came before." She said, rapping her knuckles on Hayato's head. The hunter stilled in his attempts to get free, instead propping his weight on his elbows on the far side of her lap.

"Those that came before?" He asked, remembering her mention of this when she was infected. "Those that created the pieces of Eden?" She nodded. "Those that created us?" He asked again, shocking himself with his amazingly witty banter.

She nodded again. "Those that are a part of you." She folded her hands and laid them across the hunter's head as if he were merely a tabletop.

Altaïr rocked his head back, narrowing his eyes and glaring down his nose at her. "Me." He grunted, not convinced. She'd mentioned this before. Had a few studies of his genome sent off and returned, scrutinized and studied. That had been her conclusion, as he'd suspected as much before, but shoved such a pretentious theory aside. Aisling didn't seem to have a similar theory about herself, and of the two of them, her precognition far surpassed his eagle vision as a superhuman skill. She would be the more likely candidate if only one of them would be from pseudo-divine descent.

"Yes. From you, and the pieces of Eden they will be made. Remade. Rediscovered, but imperfect. They'll have to evolve back to their own natural state. We need some of them on our side, but the two we need might destroy each other without the intervention of the boys." She said, smiling and patting Hayato on the head again. She leaned back on her hands, and the hunter slowly pushed himself vertical again, unsure if that were her intention. She wrinkled her nose in a grin at the hunter, who grumbled a rhythm similar to a laugh. Turning back to Altaïr, her face lost its smile. "Are you okay? You're really pale."

"No." He admitted. "I think I'm coming down with something."

"Fine bunch we make. Pneumonia, the flu and the plague." She chuckled. The hopeful tone of her previous statements gone. Her focus was now on the irony of their health in the immediate future. He knew he wouldn't be getting any more answers out of her.

"Probably is the plague." He admitted swallowing around the rough feeling in his throat.

"Hey, at least you'll pretty your face back up." She said dryly. He rolled his eyes, and she laughed. "Not that you don't wear scars well." She added hastily.

"Stop trying to save it. You already put your foot in it." He said, standing up and looking over at the other two hunters that had only swung their legs around to sit on the edges of the workbenches. Rai and Nityan. Nityan? He wore the darker green? Maybe. He looked back down at Aisling. "I'm going to go shank myself in the bathtub. You'll be so kind as to set up the stasis generator for me?"

Her head swiveled up to look at him. "What? Yeah. Sure. You're ready for that?"

"I'll wait for A.P." He said, and then pointed over at Rai. "Rai, make sure she makes it back in alright. She's not really steady right now, and she'll probably be dying here soon." The hunter nodded, so Altaïr added on a bit more. "And don't let her stay out here too long." Again, Rai nodded, and so Altaïr made his way to the door. He stopped after pulling his coat tight and zipping it up and looked back at them. "In fact, help her out when the pneumonia gets too bad." Rai nodded hesitantly, and Altaïr headed out into the snow again.

As the door closed behind him, and the snow swirled to the concrete floor, Aisling breathed a sigh of relief. Nityan hopped off the workbench and came over to crouch in the floor beside her. She hugged him. "Good to see you too." He pushed her away, nearly tipping her into Hayato, who pushed her vertical again. She looked Nityan over before checking herself to see if she'd picked up any of the blood or dirt. "God, but you're a mess." Rai stood up and moved down to the last hunter still sleeping on the floor by the quad. He nudged the lump of red and tan, which snorted and growled at the intrusion on sleep. After a moment it rolled onto its stomach, heaved up onto all fours and crawled across the floor. Rai had already joined the other two, and Aisling had hugged him as well. He frowned at her and looked away as she did so. She pulled his face back around. "Quit kicking yourself. I'm fine now." The frown faded, but no smile replaced it, and she turned to the last hunter. "Donovan? Rashad?" She guessed the name until he looked up at her. "Rashad." She said. "Good to see you too." He wrapped his arms around her waist, standing up straight and lifting her off the floor and spinning her. "I know! I know! It's been forever!" He sat her down on unsteady feet. Rai caught her elbow and held her steady, growling at Rashad for throwing off what little equilibrium she had. Rashad grumbled at Rai, and Rai nodded toward the door. She watched the exchange, understanding the unspoken questions. "He's inside. Caught the plague again, so he'll probably kill himself here soon. I'll put a stasis generator on him and he'll sleep for a while." Rashad grinned at her. "I know." She grinned back. "He still doesn't know, and I want to keep it that way, but he's getting suspicious. I don't know where he caught the plague this time, but I'm glad he did. I don't know how I would've conned him into stasis on my own." She sank to the floor again, pulling things out of the bag. Fabric, patches, thread, needles, a handheld sewing machine. "I don't know how long it'll take for the pneumonia to get ugly on me. So let's get you guys' clothes fixed, and we'll see about finding everybody else for it too."

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a/n Aisling is full of shit. That's not why she caught the hunters, though she saw the uses for them down the road. She doesn't believe in unitaskers, so they'll have lots of purposes down the road, kinda like Altaïr. He's a frickin swiss army knife of utility.

Yeah. I know I don't explain pieces of plot in the notes, but I am here because it's the end of this story. Hooray sequels. This wasn't the direct sequel. I got distracted from the sequel I started first. So… chronologically.. Feathers – Drive/Purpose – Chronic Symptoms – Treatment – AI – Concern. This is getting epic in scope.

But yes. This is the end. Sorry. This arc is complete.


End file.
